With the Christmas season coming to a close the site of evergreen trees lying at the curb awaiting pick-up is now a common sight in urban areas. Before adding yours to the mix, take a look at your garden first. Evergreen boughs are a great way to protect tender perennials or even small shrubs from winter damage! Your tree may just serve another purpose beyond decorating your home for the holidays.

With the majority of the leaves down, fall clean-up is becoming less about ‘just getting leaves to the curb’ (or the compost pile or the leaf mulcher) and more about making the garden look tidy heading into the winter. Whether you prefer to strip your beds of leavesor keep the leaves in place over the winter, there are a few key tips that can ‘up the tidy factor’ in your fall garden..

Throughout this growing season, did you notice any perennials completely outgrowing their allotted garden space? Did you notice a perennial that grew as a ring with a big empty space in the middle of it (see photo)? Did you have a perennial that under-performed in it’s floral display? These are all signs that your perennial in question needs to be divided…

The gardening season is progressing at an alarming rate and it is hard to believe that we are now on to fall gardening tasks. At this time of year, I am often asked: “what should I cut back”? I am going to try to answer this question as concisely as possible in this post (no promises).

We are in the dog days of summer and while it may seem like our gardening ‘to do’ list is virtually complete, there are certainly tasks to be done! This point in the growing season is a great time to address excessive growth and keep things in check.

Another main deadheading technique that gardeners use is deadheading to a lateral bud/flower. This technique is really easy, once you know what you are looking for. So let’s start with the basics… what on earth is a lateral bud or flower?!

We are still in the thick of summer deadheading- the constant attempt to tidy perennials, prolong their bloom or encourage a repeat bloom (depending on the perennial). If you like non-precise gardening tasks, this type of deadheading is for you!

Well the time has come for daylilies (Hemerocallis spp.) to shine…blooms of all sorts of colours rising above their grassy foliage. Then, just as quickly as they begin to shine, they start to ‘un-shine’ (if this is not a word, I would like to propose it as a new one).

Deadheading. It sounds more like a Halloween post than a gardening one but this is one of the most common tasks that a landscape gardener will undertake during the growing season.

Growing season is well underway and it is time for some plants to get a little haircut! Think back to last season… perhaps you remember some floppy perennials in your garden? Yep- we are going to deal with those.

Patience is a virtue that very few people have these days. In a world where everything is instant, I really think society is forgetting how to pause and wait for things. Fortunately there are still activities that test this dying skill… gardening is one of them!