Wes Porter

Not much on the gardener’s mind or elsewhere

According to late owner of the famous Victoria, B.C., garden Princess Abkhazi, “There is a Chinese proverb which says that to be happy for a week you take a new concubine. To be happy for a month, you kill a pig, and to be happy all your life you build a garden.” She concluded, “ I can't vouch for the first two, but the last is true.”

Children’s Gardening: Briar Rose

In the classic fairy tale Sleeping Beauty, the threatened Princess Aurora was renamed Rose Briar by the good fairies to protect her from the foul Maleficent.

A Green Choice for the Environmentally Concerned

Half-a-dozen years ago, Swedish biologist Susanne Wiigh-Masak went public with her new composting proposal. Promessa Organic AB, her Swedish company offers an environmentally acceptable way to dispose of Uncle John or Auntie Debbie when they finally throw in the trowel.

The Tunguska Tree Termination

Within seconds a century ago, at 7:14 a.m. on 30 June 1908, something destroyed 80 million trees. And not a single environmentalist protested. There were no environmentalists in the modern sense. Scientists and seers started theories on what caused greatest explosion in recorded history.

Gardener, Spare That Lawn!

No doubt that planting season is well and truly here. Like the first flies, so are those earnest worthies convinced that the way to alleviating world hunger, rising food prices, carbon footprints and assorted other problems is urban agriculture. Rip out the front lawn. Plant in its place vegetables and fruit. Thus the mantra of the self-proclaimed enlightened. Pro and con . . .

POOR FOR PARASKAVIDEKATRIPHOBICS GOOD FOR GARDENERS

It is not a good month for paraskavidekatriphobics (fear of Friday 13th) and triskaidekaphobics (those afraid of the number 13 itself). They can find solace, however, in that it is the only such on this year’s calendar. And they’re in good company. Marlene Dietrich was an astrology devotee, loathe to ignore omens, as noted Steven Bach in his biography of the acclaimed entertainer. Ernest Hemingway, on board the Île de France in 1934, wrote of how she refused to join a table where twelve are already seated. A more recent thespian with somewhat similar beliefs is Shirley MacLaine.

So You Want to Start a Vegetable Garden?

Food safety and supply are other issues. Likewise transporting food to distant destinations from countries with questionable health habits.

Catalogue Review: Vineland Nurseries

Catalogue Review: Vineland Nurseries 4540 Martin Road, Beamsville, Ontario L0R 1B1 Phone/Fax 905-562-4836 Catalogue $2

The natural way to pest control

It was Koppert Biological Systems (www.koppertonline.ca) that put us onto the nattering nabobs of nematode natural control. Not all offerings of nematodes are alike and, as we were told, it is a wide-open field with few controls. A good resource, Koppert let us onto, was Ohio State University where much research has been completed.

May gardening

Many, many years ago a popular musical, Naughty Marietta, came to the stage. Subsequently, plant breeders having the same savour-faire as they do today, the name was bequeathed to a new marigold. Hence the delightful description of this Tagetes in an English seed catalogue: “‘Naughty Marietta’ is good for warm bedding.”

Trough Garden with Rock Stars

What’s with the cool Easter Island dude hanging out at the local friendly garden centre? According to B.C.’s famed Valleybrook, veterans of many a new and neat idea, his name is Cliff. He’s hit on alpine plants because they are, he says, “they’re little, they’re tough and they’re cute!”

VIA’s Garden Route now includes Communities in Bloom destinations

Most press releases, ‘media kits’ is another term publicity hounds delight in, are consigned to the great pulp mill in the sky. Once in a while though, along comes a one deserves to be brought forward.

Boring Beetles and Other Aliens

Late last year, forest health technician Ed Czerwinski spotted some sick-looking ash trees in northeast Toronto. Examination confirmed his fears. He had been the first to spot similar symptoms in ash trees in Windsor, southwestern Ontario in 2002. Now he knew the Asian alien had reached the nation’s largest city.

April gardening

“It is Spring! It is Spring!” proclaimed versifier Ogden Nash. “Let us leap! Let us sing!/ Let us claim we have hives/And abandon our wives!” but requesting that to “ . . . Please go and focus/Your whims on a crocus.”

Moore Water Gardens

No garden is complete without a lily pond, believes Moore Water Gardens. Canada’s oldest and largest commercial water gardens were founded in 1932 in Port Stanley on the north shore of Lake Erie. Much water has flowed under the proverbial bridge since that time.

The Sweet Month of March

“Hearing the sugar was made from Trees in Canada, and being thorough Loyalists, and not wishing to be mixed up with the Contest about it to be carried on, we packed up our effects and came over to Canada. So wrote Catherine White: Loyalist Narratives from Upper Canada, describing how they fled to American Revolution to discover our land of milk and maple syrup.

Good Friday’s Auspicious and Inauspicious Plantings

Good Friday falls on the 21st March this year. Gardeners being no more superstitious than others – touch wood – many a tale is told of what might or might not be planted on this important day in the Christian calendar.

March Gardening

“Indoors or out, no one relaxes/In March, that month of wind and taxes,” declared Ogden Nash. True, alas how true, for gardeners too.

Posies of Rosies

Paintings of roses decorated rooms in the Minoan city of Knossos near the north coast of the island of Crete about 3,000 B.C.

Wiarton Willie, Punxsutawney Phil, Shubenacadie Sam

Last June was a disaster for British Formula One driver ace Anthony Davidson. And it was all the fault of a rodent. Positioned third in the 37th lap of the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal, Davidson in his Super Aguri Honda made unplanned contact with a groundhog.