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.

The Saturday before Christmas a group of lads showed up late in the afternoon. They got the gigantic earth movers going and then drove them off rather quickly I thought as I turned back to work. When the cop arrived on Monday he asked:  ”Did you notice anything odd over the weekend?”  Of course I had, at 4:35 on Saturday  two giant machines left the site.  ”What did the guys look like?” he asked.   Well, like construction workers: puffy vests, toques, steel-toed boots. “Where are the machines now?” I enquired.  Oh,  on a ship to a foreign land; or off to another construction site.  The contractors were convinced it was organized crime.

It certainly looked organized but it’s hard  to feel sorry for them. Apparently all Caterpillar machines have the same key. All you need is one bent person and you’ve got yourself a $120,000 chunk of metal.

TRENDS

Trends come slowly to the mind when this sort of annoying stuff is going on.  But I’m as willing as the next person to take a shot at it. We used to joke at Gardening Life magazine that whatever we declared as a trend one year, we’d say was out of style the next. Not completely true but now there are so few garden mags, I still like this pretentious little ritual–it  makes us all feel like the season is about to swing over into something new.

1. Vegetable gardening in the front yard or among the perennials is going to be as big this year as it was last. People have fallen in love with growing vegetables, not just for eating but also for the aesthetics. A gigantic fennel or edging of Swiss chard looks great among autumn bloomers such as Salvia bonariensis and other plants of its ilk.

2. Orange has been declared the colour of the year by the fashionistas,  and gardeners have been ahead of the curve on this one. We chose orange tulips, dahlias and echinaceas to marry up with purple and magenta plants a few years ago. This year, we’re trendy.

3. Fewer lazy landscaper gardens:  you know the kind–thirty hydrangeas, 18 grasses et voila a Piet Oudolph garden.  Well, not bloody likely. Oudolph is a genius at colour block planting and I haven’t seen one garden in this style that passes muster. This sort of  dreary garden is so foolproof and so boring that even the most visually illiterate of clients wants it to be replaced by something requiring both thought and individuality.  Most of our work last year at Marjorie Harris Gardens was taking out this sort of egregious mess, moving plants around and adding new and exciting ones.

4. Flowering shrubs. Instead of putting in tall perennials, smaller flowering shrubs are catching the eye of gardeners. There are some staggering beauties coming into the market place and it’s a matter of demanding them at your own favourite nursery. There are such dishy ones as my favourite plant du jour:  Calycanthus floridus an eastern native with maroon blossoms and long tapered leaves.  I’ll have a list and  pix of the new ones I adore coming up shortly.

More trends to come, I hate these blogs when they get too long. I also apologize for having been absent such a long time but between our tour to Italy last autumn and recovering from  knee replacement surgery immediately after, I seem to have been totally preoccupied. I’ll keep this up on a regular basis from now on. And I’ll be sending out the free midwinter newsletter next week. If you’d like to receive it and are not on the mailing list,  just get in touch. And we’ve got the new itinerary for this year’s trip to Italy just hit the button up on the banner and you’ll find it in all its glory.

Then the adorable friends from BC start the annual announcements about what they’ve got in bloom NOW. I love my friends and it makes me long for something to show up in this garden. Until this great dump of snow, I could see snouts coming up from the ground. The wonderful Hamamelis ‘Diane’ is looking gorgeous bedecked in bright orange-red flowers.  I love the the denseness of the coral bark of the Acer palmatum ‘Sangu-kaku’ (on the left side of this picture).

I wasn’t unhappy with this sight until I got a very nice e-mail from Jeff de Jong. He has a radio show in Victoria (will be on it April 2) and my burning desire for  Spring came leaping to the forefront.

Here’s Crocus with Cyclamen coum taken in his garden this week. I could weep. This is a dazzling combination.  The undertones of  violet in both plants works absolutely perfectly.  It’s hard to grow crocus in our neighbourhood alas.  Squirrels paw them up almost inevitably. I have two small patches I watch like a hawk (where is that hawk when you need him?) and putting the Cyclamen with them is great.

Cyclamen are tuberous plants and should grow in this area but I’ve never planted them and this will encourage me to do so.  And now for spring….

We gardeners live in hope—always.

Barry says:  ”My favourite plant combo is Cotinus ‘Royal Purple’ and Baptisia ‘Purple Smoke’. First thing in the morning when there is still dew on the leaves they are spectacular!”

Couldn’t agree with him more. The foliage on these two plants are both so well-defined they make a gorgeous contrast. It works really well.

Cotinus, smoke bush, now has many sizes in varying cultivars but ‘Royal Purple’ is still one of the strongest and best available.  In cold areas it will die back in winter. But here in Z6 we can expect it to winter through most years. It doesn’t cause much trouble and the leaves are such a rich texture.

Baptisias in any form is not the easiest plant to grow. They take forever to have their lovely blooms, followed by dramatic beans.  It’s easy to get discouraged about it but it’s drought tolerant with smokey blue foliage and then amazing purple-blue spikes of bloom are staggering.  This is a combo I’m doing to be keen to try if I can shoehorn a cotinus into the space near the baptisia.

Thanks so much Barry.   If anyone else has a great combo I’d love to see it.

The catalogues are coming in and speaking of worth the wait. Dugald Cameron’s Gardenimport is so delicious, it’s definite bathtub reading. Really great new stuff. A friend calls it garden porn, but I think of it as a reflection of Dugald’s ebullient personality. It’s such a good catalogue I keep it on hand for reference all the time.

Harvey Wrightman is another absolutely first class plantsman and though you have to get his catalogue   www.wrightmanalpines.com as an excellent reference to rare and unusual plants, you have to go to his site and look at the videos. Most garden videos are unbelievably boring, not Harvey’s. The one with the little kid making a rock garden is funny, charming and one I go back to regularly just to be cheered up.

Hallelujah Lost Horizons catalogue is with us as well.  It is one of the most complete and interesting catalogues in the country. Larry Davidson is very careful with his plants and he’s also a grower in a tough area  (windy not a lot of snow cover) so it’s plants are tough and very well grown. I can tell I’m in trouble already, stickies abound. He doesn’t ship any more but you wouldn’t want to miss the nursery anyway.   www.losthorizons.ca It takes about 4 minutes to print out the catalogue. Worth the money and the paper.

Fraser’s Thimble Farm has nary a picture and it is definitely a must-have. Tons of unusual plants and they will ship the little stuff. www.thimblefarms.com.

More to come. It’s the only way to ward off February blues.

Barry

But this is a dangerous situation for trees and shrubs laden with snow as the sun hits them and  makes them incredibly heavy. Brittle or frozen branches run the risk of snapping. This can cause an enormous amount of damage. I hate to much this up  because the garden just makes my heart fill up when it this serene. Very hard not to spend a lot of time gazing at it and ignoring the situation as it actually is. So out I went and trammelled up the untrammelled.

Things here are a bit nasty. My adored husband, Jack, has to have heart surgery and I haven’t felt like blogging or doing anything but spend time thinking about him (and being with him).

We don’t know when the tests will begin and we don’t know when the surgery will take place, so it’s a waiting game at the moment.  It’s hard to feel like going out and being social.

So once again the garden is a solace. This fact has kept me going through a lot of crises.  Something smashes you in the face, you spend time in or looking at the garden and you can feel the beat of your heart change. You can feel the calm entering your body.  The garden does heal but of course you have to let it do its work. I can’t imagine being without a garden whether it’s what I see behind my house or having plants in pots to gaze at.

Speaking of plants to look at. The Amaryllis from Gardenimport are all coming into bloom and they are gorgeous. This is truly  looking into the face of nature. All those complex little details and the subtle striations of colour. I’d love to post a picture, but my brand new camera doesn’t work properly. So another schlep to the camera store.  I was banging away with it over Christmas and anything took was not properly in focus. Not good.

I am thrilled about how good the garden looks right now. The Japanese maple in the centre looking like a piece of sculpture with the snow caught in its branches just so.

The media frenzy:  cancelled on Zoomer radio yesterday (Monday);  bumped on Canada A. M. today.  But I will be Canada A. M. with the very nice Seamus O’Reagan tomorrow  (Wed 8:40 a.m.).

talking about Thrifty: living the frugal life with style.

Seamus and I both lived in Labrador in the same area and we were so excited about that I can hardly remember what I said. Anyway he’s a lovely guy.

And if you missed my appearance try this link:

http://watch.ctv.ca/news/top-picks/living-thrifty/#clip254858

I’m still  in the process right now of getting out the new e-letter about winter shrubs

Saturday morning CBC’s Fresh Air will have me on between 8 and 8:30  99.1FM

SUNDAY: THERE WILL BE A CLOTHING SWAP.  Here’s the invitation:

Dancemakers
Sunday, January 17
Drop off clothes at Dancemakers starting at 12 p.m.
Swap Start Time: 2 p.m.
Case Goods Warehouse, Building 74, Studio 306
55 Mill Street, Toronto
(All proceeds go to Dancemakers.)

Let me know if you want the new e-letter.

Another superb catalogue is Gardenimport . This is one of the best illustrated and photographed catalogues around. It’s great for new plants, and if you live in an area where there isn’t a wonderful nursery, this is the one to examine closely.

There are many more catalogues but there are the two top ones (for seeds in the first case; and plants in the second case).

It was a bonanza on New Year’s Day this year. We always go to a great party hosted by Alison Gordon and it never fails to be amusing, filled with lots of wonderful people. Margaret Atwood came up to me and said how much she likes my new book (it was her idea, and she’s got lots of stuff in there) and that she had tweeted about it.  I was naturally thrilled.

All writers are dead nervous about a new book coming out. Thrifty: Living the Frugal Life with Style was a huge amount of fun to write and I got a lot of my wonderful friends to write essays and be interviewed and they came up with glorious stuff. Sometimes funny, always useful and I’m going to be flogging it all this month.

Next Monday (Jan 11), I’ll be on with Libby Znaimer on Zoomer Radio 96.3 in Toronto.

What fun this all is.  I feel very lucky to have a lovely publisher, editor and now publicity hound to help sell it.  You can also buy it from me and I ‘ll sign it for you.

And I’m really am working on a new e-letter and you can sign up for it if  you haven’t already. Thanks everyone for responding to this blog and my tweets (marjorie_harris).

We must therefore plunge in a do a completely ruthless personal list which may mean nothing to anyone else but me.

First of all there are all of my own books. Absolutely great gifts. Try and find them in a book store. If not you can order them from me and I’ll get them out immediately.

And I’ll soon have copies of my new book:  THRIFTY: LIVING THE FRUGAL LIFE WITH STYLE.  It will cost $26 including postage.

We have reason to celebrate others’ books mightily:

MIDDLE AGE SPREAD by Sonia Day is a memoir of a city person moving to the country. It’s about building a garden as well as a house, a life and it’s a lot of fun.  And she’s such a lovely writer.

You might want to find a good catalogue of great plants.  Wrighmtan Alpines is one of the ones I adore. Why not make a promise for a new plant as soon as he ships in spring.  You could do the same with Gardenimport plants as well.  Both have special plants you’ll find nowhere else. Go to their web sites. Pick a plant, and put a shot of it into a really lovely card.  Great gift.

GREAT STUFF

It’s not possible to have too many pairs garden gloves, mainly because people like me leave them all over the garden, gather them up and plunk them in the wash all at once. Make sure that’s possible when you are picking them out. rittenhouse

The best watering can, bar none, is still the Hawes Watering can. It’s so well balanced. And it should only come in racing car green to my mind.  I have one that’s at least twenty years old so it’s worth the investment.  You can get them at both Rittenhouse and Lee Valley and really good garden stores.

I’ve mentioned this before , but it’s proved to be such a useful item I have to mention it again:  the countertop Compost Pail which Lee Valley sells for $45.

Waterstik is   perfect for anyone with containers, has a balcony, rooftop gardens. It’s a gizmo you stick in the pot to check on when you need to water.  $18.50. Lee Valley

Mark Disero Has lots of fun on his web sites. He’s the gossip columnist for gardeners in the GTA so you can keep an eye on what’s going on in the gardening community.

Sign up for my new e-letter:  click here As soon as the Christmas season is over I’ll be  back to writing.

Here we are just getting ready to celebrate and it’s not particularly snowy but we live in hope that it won’t be a huge storm just enough to make magic.

MERRY CHRISTMAS  and  HAPPY HOLIDAYS

Now winter will get serious. We’ve had no snow at all and when I look at my garden journal for last year it was a different story. It was sort of snow-drizzle on this day.

The garden seems particularly alive right now and many plants are gorgeous. And as soon as this dopey software is fixed, I’ll pin them up here.

All the evergreens got several extra couple of buckets of water to help them get through the winter.

I’ve had complaints from Ottawa that too many buds showing, leaves unfurling as this curious weather has encouraged. They are longing for snow. Not me. Not yet.

Thanks so much for your notes I love getting them.

Our neighbour Laurie Matheson came over and rescued us. “I’ve got a wood stove.” she said. ?All I wanted was to warm up. ?Because I’m on Rogers of course I didn’t get any phone calls but Jack, my husband, is on Bell dial-up so he could at least use the phone to calm the family’s fears. ?

I was all for checking into a hotel and ordering up room service. But Jackson said: ?”I’m not leaving the house, I want to sleep in my own bed.” ?Good choice it turned out. ?We spent the day huddled around the wood stove with another frozen refugee, Helen, who has serious health problems. I was so impressed. ?Laurie was truly worried about everyone on the street who might not have heat. She and Amanda up the street got Helen and all her special food and equipment settled comfortably by the fire.?

I kept nipping next door (our house is their semi-detached) to bring over the food. ?How about some ground coffee? ? Never again will I be without ground coffee in the house. ?I’d been preparing a special lunch for some gardening chums, so I dragged everything I was making over.

We cooked in the dark (candle light is really hard to cook by my respect for our ancestors shot up), we put together a smashing dinner. Laughing away because Laurie and I get bumping into each other, tripping over the dog. I had no idea what I was doing, but if you have good ingredients you can make good food. We did get into the wine, and whatever it was I cooked, it was terrific and we downed all the pasta dish cooked on the top of the gas stove and the panzanella salad.?

Then the lights pinged on about 10 p.m. I went home, somewhat reluctantly: the house was still creaking from the cold and ?took almost 12 hours to warm it up to 64F. ?It was another cold night, but we were in our own beds (fully dressed) and happy to be there. ?

It was frightening because these were the two ?coldest nights of the year. ?We have heat again. We’re now very aware of how vulnerable we are and neither Jack nor I are going to forget that very soon. But we’re incredibly grateful to have a wonderful neighbour like Laurie. ?What a cheerful, generous person. We are lucky.