Unwlecome in the Cold Frame

In our climate, cold frames are useful, but not as much as they are in places with milder climates. If they are in the sun, you cannot leave plants in them in winter, because temperatures in the frames can fluctuate enormously. They stay buried in ice and snow for most of the winter. However they are especially handy in spring.

Unexpected Invader

We are all familiar with foreign plants that do too well when they are brought to a new continent. It is the case of our native fireweed (Chamerion angustifolium) in the UK, and of the numerous European plants (often medicinal in origin) such as plantain (Plantago major) and coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) which are completely entrenched in North America.
Sometimes though, a foreign plant will grow or only manage to survive, but it then becomes invasive in some circumstances. It seems to be the case with the cowslip.

Cowslip (Primula veris)

NARGS

The acronym NARGS stands for the North American Rock Garden Society. This year the General Annual Meeting of the Society is in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The meetings include among other things visits to some of the best local gardens. Here are three beautiful gardens I visited today with the group.

A Vocal Spring

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Ten days ago we were under snow.   Now many of the flowering plants that bloggers from warmer climates have been describing in the last month have rushed into bloom here too. However,  if blooms are important markers of the changing seasons, here and at this time of the year, they are not the most obvious.

Pruning currant and gooseberry bushes

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We had a very sunny, warm day, yesterday, and I took this opportunity to prune currant and gooseberry bushes. 

Pink currant Champagne

Wintering Roses - The Canadian Way

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Because the earth bulges at the Equator and is flattened at the Poles, the halfway point between the Equator and the North Pole is actually 16.2 kilometres north of the 45th parallel. This means that the garden here is just about at that halfway point. It also means that we are roughly at the same latitude as Grenoble, Turin, Simferopol in Crimea, Xinjiang in China, Hokkaidō in Japan, Michigan and Wisconsin in the United States. However, our climate here in Ontario and that of the two northern states is, to say the least, very different from that of Grenoble or Turin. Only now is the last snow  melting as you can see below.

Sitting in the Garden

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My last post was on pots.  In this one I thought I would move on to benches. Here is a collection of bench pictures taken in various gardens in the last few years.  These give some ideas of where to place benches to ensure they are comfortable and look attractive.

Large pots

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Inspired by the pot collections in one of Sophie's last posts, I thought I would also do a number on pots. However, looking at the pictures I put together, it appears that my post will be mostly about empty pots!
Pots, especially large ones, do not have to be filled with plants to be effective in the garden. They create a sense of scale. They provide interesting contrasts in shapes, and they especially act as focal points. The black pot in the flower bed in the picture below does all of these things.

Record Keeping in the Garden

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Reading one of Angie's previous posts on record keeping in the garden and her mention of Beth's Lesson Learned, I thought I would describe my own record keeping system for the garden. Describing that system might offer an opportunity to improve it, in other words to learn some lessons of my own.

Crocuses ( crop from last year)

Edging

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Although it plays an important role in how a garden looks, edging is not often given much attention. Simultaneously, edging holds the garden together and delineates its various sections: the lawn, the garden beds, the paths. I had a look at my garden pictures to find examples of various styles of edging in order to assess them from a practical and an aesthetic point of view. Here is what I found.