Wes Porter

Decorating for Christmas 2011

Just as the rest of the western world is bidding a fond adieu to the remains of the festive fowl, merry merchandisers meeting in Frankfurt, Germany, will be dictating what they fondly believe will be next season’s decorating trends. Christmasworld show features six trade floors filled with the latest in floral supplies, ribbons and packaging, seasonal decorations, party items, and yet more must-haves for the fashion-conscious host.

Celebrate the season ouside and inside

It was Ogden Nash who summed it up with: “Oh, give me an old-fashioned Christmas card/With mistletoe galore, and holly by the yard/ With galumptious greens and gorgeous scarlets . . .” Yup, that will just about do it before we return to the more mundane things in a gardener’s life.

Golden Opportunities

All that glisters is not gold, oft have you heard it told ~ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice True, but there’s still gold in them there hills – and elsewhere. At prices today, mines long believed played out are being revived near and far. When gold reached $1,063 an ounce Toronto-based Romarco Minerals Inc. reopened the historic Halle Gold Mine near Kershaw, South Carolina, the only gold mine east of the Mississippi.

Questions We’re Often Asked: Easy Indoor Plants

Urban folk are becoming more and more inclined to apartment living. Half the population of Canada’s largest city, Toronto, now live thus and condominium construction shows no signs of slackening. Neither though does the desire to green the indoor environment, removing pollutants without mechanical filtering systems. Additionally, increasing numbers of office administrators are realizing that indoor plants have practical benefits, encouraging efficiency and reducing absenteeism.

Are There Zombies in Your Garden?

Halloween may have come and gone, but there are still could be some weird and wonderful happenings lurking there, waiting for another season. As for elsewhere, well, you had to ask, didn’t you?

Threats from Eris, Dysmonia and Ataxaphobia

A few weeks ago came that much-anticipated event, the annual Ig Noble Award ceremonies at Harvard University. Results were anxiously scanned, hoping against hope that they included horticultural happenings. Thanks to a Japanese team led by Naoki Urushiahta, president of SEEM-based Tokyo, we were not disappointed.

Questions We’re Often Asked: Fungus Gnats

The philosophy of live and let live has its limits. One of these comes when small flies attempt to share your wineglass with you. “Fruit fly,” you cry while the little beast does the backstroke in your Chilean Santa Rita Reserva.

Creating a Stink to Bug You

Coming soon to you . . . the brown marmorated stinkbug or if you prefer, Halyomorpha halys. The Asian invader was initially confirmed from Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1996. Since then it has been identified in 33 other states.

Neat New Ways to Greet from Holland

Clever people, the Dutch: What better way to acknowledge a kind deed or thought in this green age than ‘Greetings That Grow.’ The packaged 2-in-1 of greeting card and gift come in six choices to suit the occasion. Each includes seeds, a coir disk planting medium, along with a 4-inch (10 cm) terracotta pot. Choose dwarf sunflower seeds to say ‘Happy Birthday’ or ‘Thinking of You’ with, of course, forget-me-not or sage. ‘Thank You’ acknowledgment comes with pansy or thyme, sweet pea for ‘Celebration’ and tea for ‘Friendship.’ If none of these express exactly the right thought, then write you own on a blank card accompanied by basil seed. Your local friendly garden centre is the place to look for these neat ideas.

What’s in a Name?

As a girl, one of the favourite books of Katherine, now Duchess of Cambridge, was Anne of Green Gables. Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery was a keen gardener herself – and an observant one. Not only did she record many garden and wild plants in her novels about the feisty redheaded orphan from Prince Edward Island, but also local associations.

Fun in the Fall garden

Momus, the Greek god of revelry would have thoroughly approved of the more modern Thanksgiving, Canadian style. In particular once again the time to undertake ornithomancy, the sharing of a defunct turkey’s furcula in order to predict the future.

Questions We Are Often Asked: African Violets

Today, the named hybrids of Saintpaulia ionantha run into thousands, including miniatures. Yet little more than a century ago the plant was unknown in cultivation, lurking on the forest floor at 2,000 to 3,000 feet elevation in what is today Tanzania. But in the final years of the 19th-century that was the German colony of Tanganyika. There, in Tanga province in 1892, it was discovered by district commissioner Baron Walter von Saint Paul-Illaire (1860-1910). He sent seeds back to his father, an amateur botanist in Germany.

Naked Ladies Go Great in the Autumn Garden

Like the Greeks before them, the English have a word for it. And when it comes to garden plants they are especially prolific. Across the wide Atlantic, others have been known to gleefully grab onto this.

Bulbs We’re On the Scent Of

Over the years, knowledgeable gardeners seeking for the scent of spring have relied on fragrant Narcissus varieties such as ‘Cheerfulness’ and her cousin ‘Yellow Cheerfulness,’ the confusingly but deliciously scented ‘Geranium’ and other old favourites. ‘Golden Echo,’ another fragrant Jonquilla type, joins them this season.

There’s Voodoo in the Garden

“Voodoo Lily: I think I met a girl called that once,” reminisced Nick Graham of Science Oxford. Perhaps that is why we find Dracunculus vulgaris of southeastern Europe being sold under its alternate name of Dragon Arum.

Dutch Develop Deer & Squirrel Resistant Bulbs Collection

A couple of months ago in June we listed various alleged ways for discouraging squirrels. Now in an effort to ward off deer we must add such sources as bars of soap, tiger dung, coyote urine, even human hair and male urine – at least if one can believe recommendations made by frustrated home gardeners and professional horticulturists alike, from coast to coast, generation to generation.

Keeping up with the garden

Gardeners must always be prepared to look to the future. Planting bulbs is one of the brightest ways to achieve this. Much to the horror of those master bulb growers the Dutch, bulb sales in North America have stagnated over the past few years. North America accounts for 30 per cent of world flower bulb demand so clearly a boost was needed. And a boost there will be – $5.7 million in marketing support spread over the next three years. You will likely see it under the tagline “Bulbs. Dig, drop, done.” In all fairness, that is pretty well it. Other than discouraging squirrels from what they fondly believe is an instant cafeteria . . . This leads gardeners to indulge in coprolalia, or tendency to swear, even perhaps trichotillomania, tearing of the hair.

Questions We Are Often Asked: Lady Slipper Orchids

The Paphiopedilum – “paphs” to their many admirers – are also more prosaically known as the Lady Slipper Orchids. Indeed, pedilum means ‘slipper,’ which the lip of the flower resembles. (Paphios was a temple in Cyprus dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite, or Paphia.) This is confusing, as the paphs are only distantly related to our native Cypripedium Lady Slipper Orchids. As with these though they are usually terrestrial but there the resemblance ends – sometimes they are epiphytic or even lithophytic (growing on rocks). They are tropical inhabitants of rainforests from the Himalayas to the Solomon Islands in the Pacific. About 60 species are known from the wild but there are many hybrids available in cultivation.

Railroaded in the Garden

Does your garden include engines, rolling stock, turntable pits and switchstands? When you visit a garden centre, do you ignore the towering magnolias and mophead hydrangeas in favour of plants with tiny leaves and miniature flowers? If so says C. W. Cameron of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, you are one of a growing group of gardening hobbyists who have their own magazine – Garden Railways – and their own society, the Garden Railway Association with regional and national conventions. Model railways outside of the United States that is, where they are railroads. Most of Canada also but once across the ranges of the Rockies, they once again revert to garden railways. For example, British Columbia has the Vancouver Island Model Railway Club and Greater Vancouver Garden Railway Club.

Nothing Runs Like a Raccoon

Referring to that invaluable volume The Peterson Field Guide to Mammals (William Henry Burt, 2nd edition) it informs us that raccoons can be up to 40-inches in length, including the tail, and perhaps as much as 35-pounds weight. The habitat, says the author, is “along streams and lake borders were there are wooded areas or rock cliffs nearby.” He also notes that, “for many, the value of pelts and pleasure of seeing them in the wild outweighs harm done,” adding perhaps ominously “meat edible.” If you garden in Toronto you are already rolling on the floor with mirth.