Doug Green's Garden Notes

The garden planting and planning is in full swing with several trees arriving this past week - a Bartlett pear and a Maple 'Princeton Gold' along with a few Buckthorn bushes for berries (assuming the birds don't get them all first) :-)  More next week I'm sure.


Still too early and cool at night here for anything tender to go out.  You *can* plant if there's no frost but that ground is still cold and the plants will simply sit there in shock waiting for it to warm up. You're far better to keep your plants warm and protected until the ground warms up a bit more.

But many of the cool-weather seeds are in (peas, spinach etc) so the garden now has potential.

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Lawns

If you really want to do something outdoors, make sure the lawn isn't squishy (if you sink into the soil or leave any kind of footprint, it's too wet)  and give it a good raking.  That will remove all the crud from the winter and clean it up ready for serious spring growth.  If your lawn is anything like mine, it's already thinking about growing and mowing isn't too far away - so a good raking will set it all up for a good year.

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I'm moving the insect identification web page.  

I'm serious about semi-retiring so I'm going to keep 2 websites (down from 7) and focus on those.  That means my oldest site is going to be retired and all the content moved to DougGreensGarden over the next month or so.  I'll let you know when I get it moved so you can ask Moni to tell you what that insect is that's creeping you out. :-)

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Questions

As always, I'm answering questions on the relevant pages and that seems to be working well for most folks.  For new subscribers, I can't answer individual garden questions via email but if you're asking them on the relevant page on the website, they'll be answered (in other words, asking tomato questions on the tomato page and not the daylily page) :-)

I do suggest a search (form on the bottom of every page) to get yourself into the right content area. :-)

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It's Rose Planting Time

And if you are thinking about how to grow your roses - and keep them alive effortlessly over the winter - you want to read my ebook on Growing Tender Roses in Tough Climates.

Seriously.  I grow tender hybrid tea roses without winter protection and I tell you how to do it in this ebook (and yes, I don't lose them either)


Stuff to Read



In my garden travels, I find that the finest gardens tend to use all the space available to them. There is seldom a view, a patch of ground or a wall left out of the overall design and it is this compulsive inclusiveness that often turns a good garden into a great one. So, the question for my faithful readers today is, "Have you looked at the walls in your garden lately?"

Just what is it you can do with your garden walls?

You can take them down.

If you take a wall down, or do not build one in the first place, you immediately create a sense of space - you extend the barriers of your garden to include your neighbour's space. (This may be a good thing or not - depending on your neighbour.) I saw a tiny garden in Toronto once that used a fake gate in the fence so the owners could view the larger - and wonderfully colourful - neighbouring garden.

These creative folks, not having a garden large enough to grow flowers simply "borrowed" their neighbour's by looking through the gate.

Another local gardener with a large farm property cut a wide swath of trees down on the edge of their property hilltop so that when sitting on their back deck, their view extended through this gap to the lake beyond. The lake, a quarter mile or more away, would shimmer and sparkle in the distance creating a light-show for afternoon drink-time entertainment.


You can decorate them.

A Toronto interior decorator purchased several rather large mirrors and hung them on the walls of his garden. As you wander down the garden, the light is reflected from mirror to mirror and the views constantly change. Its a bit like being down the hole with Alice but interesting nevertheless.

Painting fences and walls is a time honoured tradition and the new craze in gardening is to paint a trompe l'oeil (a scene so real it fools the eye) on the fence or wall. I note you need a good artist to accomplish this trick and it is not something I am volunteering to do.

Decorating walls also includes hanging plants from them. Innovative gardeners set up hanging plant systems that allow them to move their houseplants outside for the summer - creating a summer perch close to the water and with the appropriate light exposure to encourage winter flowering.

There are any number of plant "bags" or half baskets available through garden centers that are designed to mount or hang flush on a wall surface.


You can use them as water gardens.

I have seen several ways of using fence and wall surfaces as vertical water gardens. The easiest way is to purchase a small hanging wall fountain - they resemble wall plaques with a small basin at the bottom- and hang it on the wall.

Some of these now come with built-in pumps and the only requirement is a wall and a nearby plug. Fill the fountain with water, plug it in and an ornamental whatsis at the top spits the water back into the basin at the bottom. Slightly more complex is the wall of water design. In this concept, the water is pumped to the top of a wall and is allowed to run down the wall in a wide sheet of water.

Most often, the real wall is not used but rather a fake wall or rippled piece of plastic material is installed onto the wall so the water can slide down it. Having an 8 foot wide ripple of water sliding down an outside wall creates a wonderful sound for evening parties. I have seen these at trade shows so local garden centers likely have sources for them.


You can plant your walls and fences.

There is no limit to the kinds of plants that can be trained to grow up or on a wall and this is the route taken by most gardeners. While quite traditional, is a wonderful way to extend the garden and the range of plants that can be grown in it.

There are two basic systems for supporting plants on walls - the plants support themselves or you have to build a system to support the plant. In the former, the plant has suckers that allow it to grab onto the wall or fence to support its own weight. If the chosen plant is not a vine with this holding-on habit, some sort of support and tying system must be employed to hold the plant upright. Vines that do not have suckers or holdfasts usually twist around a support; a trellis must be used for these plants.

 Attaching trellis structures to fences is not difficult. Our own designs call for 1x2 wood strips to be screwed to our fences and separated from the fence itself with spacers so the clematis I am collecting have something to cling to. It will not be fancy but the plants are not likely to complain.


Attach wires to the sturdier uprights to support the considerable weight of espaliered fruit trees. As long as a garden has a sunny wall, any number of fruit trees can be grown to decorate the wall and provide a fresh harvest for the kitchen. An apple picked -and eaten - fresh from the garden is a delight that defies description. If it is a green plant, it can be trained to grow up a wall.

I'm using a great many concrete reinforcing wire panels this year in my raised vegetable beds for pole beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, peas )anything that grows a vine will grow vertically).

As with all other forms of gardening, the only boundaries to great walls and fences are in your imagination. Get creative in your garden, get rid of the walls in your mind and your garden will never be the same again.


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I did move a page on English Ivy - how to grow it and how to kill it.