Winter has come properly decked out finally and I’m continuing to be fascinated by thinking about where our gardens are going in the next year or so.

5. An emphasis on trees. More conferences, more concern about their condition especially for native trees. Finally we are getting seriously worried about our canopies. Not just the urban canopy but canopies everywhere. Our trees have been assaulted by pollution, lumbering, invasions by exotic aliens.  The latter is being taken extremely seriously by those who want our native forests to survive and thrive.  Trees can’t go very far with global climate change and those that can’t adjust quickly are going to croak.  They give us so much we all have to become stewards of the forest. Forget that epithet tree-hugger, become one.

6. Sustainability has become a confusing term, but we’re going to have it slammed at us in almost everything that has to do with nature (which takes in everything not just gardening). We all need to get up to speed on what it really means and how it affects our gardening, lives, homes and what we can do about it.

7. Hellebores are my personal Plant of the Year:  a never-fail (though it may be slow to get a grip in some gardens), evergreen, glorious, magnificent plant. You can use it as a houseplant;  fill up a container if it’s out of its zone; or have a collection that will bloom pretty much year round. Here’s a wonder Helleborus ‘Pink Frost’ which landed in nurseries last year and should be in everyone’s garden.

8. Self-seeding plants. The whole trend toward having looser, more casual gardens means we’ll be using more and more self-seeding plants without being terrified of them (rampant, and invasive). Learn about a few of them that work well in your area. Start with a palette and then move into the plants that will work with what  you’ve got.  I’m going to write more on this so please sign up for the newsletter.

And here’s  what I’d really like to be doing now: glugging down a lovely glass of Italian wine and watching the sun set over an Italian villa. Join me, have a look at our Italian trip for this year.

Go to   <http://mgabc.org>

Or call  Hope Hilliard  at 250-589-4952.

An entertaining, educational event, hosted by Victoria Master Gardener Association, featuring one of Canada’s leading Garden authors, speakers and garden designers.   Open to the Public.

• TOPIC:  LET’S STOP MAKING UGLY GARDENS
• DATE: Wednesday, September 7,  2011
• TIME:  7:00-8:30 pm
• LOCATION:  Alix Goolden Performance Hall, Conservatory of Music.  907 Pandora Ave, Victoria
• COST:  $15.00

Please come and say hello.  I LOVE going to Victoria. I intend to drown myself in looking at gardens and talking to gardeners.

But here is one:  my garden this week.  

The summer has winged by. Last week in The Globe Plant of the Week was Clematis ‘Meine Belle’  a gorgeous vine which I longed for myself. Well forget about it. Gardenimport was so swamped with orders that they are out of it already and will be even when the next catalogue comes out. It touched a nerve that plant.

We all want lovely little clematis, different species. But what are we getting:  the great big cultivars that the growers have decided are all we can get. It’s been appalling. So only a few outlets have interesting clems. Gardenimport has others so give them a try as well, as does Lost Horizons.  And put some pressure on your local favourite nursery to search out more clematis for you next year. If they know they can make money on these plants, they will stock them. So they will put pressure on the growers to try the better ones.

Clematis ‘Betty Corning’ is going bananas in my garden in two spots. Nothing holds back this beauteous lady. But you can’t buy it anywhere anymore.  

The Globe and Mail has more videos up of me furbling on. It was a lot of fun doing them so I hope you enjoy watching them .

Gardening Basics

A new free newsletter is being worked on so if you’d like to sign up, I’d like to send it to you.

I suggested using them as houseplants for the nonce and then plant them out in the garden in May when the soil warms up.

This one is just opening up in my garden.

More later today.

This dogwood is on my mind. It looks great in  my neighbour Laurie’s garden which is where I shot this picture.  I took out its mirror image on my side of the fence.   I found that it suckered way too much for me. And though we diligently dug it out, it’s still suckering its way around.

I was disappointed in this though I want Laurie to keep hers so I can enjoy it from the house.  There are better cultivars such as ‘Winter Flame’  at least so they seem. I’m looking at catalogues which say that ‘Arctic  Fire’ doesn’t sucker.  That’s either dead wrong or my plant was mis-identified.   I believe it suckers.

But looking at this makes me want to have many coloured stems. So far here there’s a struggling Acer palmatum ‘Sangu-Kaku’ which has fantastic colour but it may not last to many more years.

Cornus alba ‘Sibirica’ which I planted back in 1968 has grown, fallen apart, been pruned back into youth and is now looking tiny but intense. By next year it will fill a good space and be more obvious.

Love this species. And the sizes are just right for a small garden planted individually, and en masse in huge or country gardens.

Thank you thank you for the kind comments about my husband Jack’s condition. We’re in the depressing waiting for medical attention mode.

I have a new camera and haven’t had time to read the instructions. But here’s our Christmas table.  The garden is looking marvellous. We can now see an intricate nest in one of the nearby trees.  The heavenly reds of the dogwoods and the Japanese maple (Acer ‘Sengu Kaku’) are to my eye breathtaking. My New Year’s resolution:  read the instructions with the new camera.

Merry Christmas, happy holidays. Have fun and cross fingers for a much better and healthier 2011

I also will blog more regularly

xx majrorie

The garden this week is lovely to my eye:

Early December 2010

Yesterday the garden was inundated by flocks of birds. On their way south I hope.  They stopped and hoovered their way through just about everything with a bit of fruit on it. It was exciting to see because they are amazingly polite:  one group would wait on the fence while another shot through picking at this and that. And not a pigeon among them.  I get tired of seeing pigeons scooping up bird seeds set out in feeder.  They aren’t interested in the things I grow for birds:  roses hips, buds on vines and shrubs (berberis seems very popular).

There is still lots and lots of colour and the evergreens are looking amazing.  I need to add many more and will do so next year.

Right now I’m working on the December e-letter so if you’d like more information and haven’t signed up, please do. I’ll get it out in the next day or so.  Just hit the button on the left (you can see the -ct of contact just under the Paris ad) and I’ll send it to you.

My wonderful web mistress Anna Pemberton has had sick kids and they trump newsletters every time. But she’s working on it.

In this shot I moved the cast bronze pine cone from its normal position at the garden side of the fountain to the top where I can enjoy it all winter. I asked sculptor Reinhard  Reitzenstein if that was okay (artists can be prickly about this sort of thing). Okay indeed he said, a little seasonal updating. Love that man. He’s not only incredibly talented, he’s a very funny guy. I’m hoping he’ll come and visit his creation soon.  It gives me non-stop pleasure and is the perfect example of why art has such an important place in the garden.  I can no longer imagine what my garden would look like without this wonderful sculpture fountain.  Looks fabulous at night all lit up from above and below. I realize I am very lucky

Here is the plant of the week:

This is Callicarpa bodinieri ‘Profusion’or Beautyberry

This is a stunner of an autumn shrub.  The fountain-like stems are now heavy with these magnificent berries.

It needs to be planted in enough sun to develop the blooms (they loved the long hot miserable summer we lived through so here’s the reward).  It can take dappled light but I’ve found that having at least a long whack of morning sun really works well.

The flowers are a pinky  colour in early summer and to be honest I don’t really notice them all that much. But it’s the berries that make an impact.  At first against deep green gorgeous tapered leaves.  The deep purple fruits are a wonder.

Really must have company and in this case it’s a weird looking Japanese maple underplanted with Ajuga.  Water well going into late autumn

Bulb list

Muscari  latifolium blue

Scilla ‘Spring Beauty’   blue

Allium ‘Atropurpureum’ purple

Allium ‘Purple Sensation’ purple-magenta

Hyacinthoides   non scripta  (English Bluebells

Tulipa tarda white  with a yellow interior

Tulipa ‘Spring Green’  white with a green stripe
My current great plants list:

Vernonia lettermanii ‘Iron Maiden’ cultivar of a native astounding.

Sciadopytis verticillata Japanese umbrella pine

Fothergilla ‘Blue Mist’

Chiononanthus virginicus

Itea ‘Little Henry’

Hakonochloa ‘All Gold’

Heuchera ‘Knockout’

I’ll be on Fresh Air with Karen Gordon who is a terrific dame, love her energy and interest. From 8:30 on we’ll be gabbing away about garden problems.

And then I’ll get back to blogging. About finding plants mentioned in the Globe columns: this is a real problem because I can only mention one place, then by the time you get there they’ll be gone. You’ve got to make demands and ask your nursery person to please get them in.

We had a garden planted 2yrs.ago. We have [had] tea roses near in the bed adj. to the house[south facing] Had an infestation of the Japanese beetles-killing all the roses plus leaves etc. Have tried the trap etc. to no avail-finally chopped all the rose bushes down. Still get a few of the on my potted plants. Pls. HELP!! Also, would the featured plant-’Barberry’ work in this area? Really enjoy your column! Thanks, Yasmin

Japanese beetles have had the perfect year:  warm winter, long wet spring, hot summer they have been mating like, well like, rabbits. This is a site I recommend you look at for some solutions to this dreadful problem:  www.ghorganics.com/JapaneseBeetle.html

Squishing regularly is good;  using Neem oil but check out what  you can get in your area and read the instructions carefully.  Temperature makes a big difference. And you’ve got until mid September to use pheromone traps which carry the scent of a virgin and attract masses of bugs. Try www.biofloris.com which has terrific products.

The newsletter is coming as soon as the wonderful Anna can design is.  So if you haven’t signed up please do so and I’ll add you to the list. It’s free.

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