Saturday, August 30, 2014

Bicycles in the Garden

Redbubble is an art site that provides printing and shipping of art work.  It 's an Australian company so has a most interesting personality and attracts artists from all over the world to sell their work here.  It started as a fine art site, but has shifted to a graphic art site, and there are many more young people who sell t-shirts, stickers, etc.  Recently they have added tote bags, pillows and duvet covers for sale.  

The site provides community functions in the form of creating Groups based on themes and interests.  I host two groups - All Glorious Gardens and All Glorious Lilies.  This picture today is from the latest All Glorious Gardens challenge.  The Group features images on the home page and offers challenges to submit entries and vote for their favourite image.

I ran the bicycle challenge recently as there are many uses of bicycles in garden decoration all over the world.  You can see here for the top ten that the gardens range from Niagara, to France, England and Australia.  

I enter the challenge to keep track of the time - there's a little clock on one's entry when voting starts - it shows the number of votes and the relative amount of time left on the clock.  There's no alert for the host, and I've found that I've run challenges and then forgotten about them until days later.  

You can see the challenge by going here:


My image, The Bike Stops Here - Niagara, was the winning image.  It was taken 2 years ago while on the St. Catharines Garden Tour.  


Thursday, August 28, 2014

It's the Thursday Farmers' Market in Grimsby

It's Thursday in Grimsby and that means that Main Street is closed and the farmers' market takes over from 3:00pm on.  I won't get there early today and know that my favourite items in fruits and vegetables will be gone by 4:00pm…oh well.

Here's a view from last week.







Wednesday, August 27, 2014

A Sprinkled Petal

The pretty sprinkled and brushed effect on the petals makes this such an interesting lily.  This one was at Lilycrest Gardens, July 2014.



Sunday, August 24, 2014

Garden Corners

Every garden tells a story.  Really great gardens have side stories and subplots along the way.  The Grimsby garden across the street on Sunnylea is such a garden.  Here's one of its little corners at the front, with a bird house and miniature hostas. I've used Filter Forge effects to create the painterly look.


Saturday, August 23, 2014

August Grimsby Gardens

I live in a town of 25,000 in the heart of the Niagara Wine region.  Award-winning Tawse Winery is just 10 minutes away, as are a dozen great Niagara Wineries.  Grimsby started as a place of orchards - we're well known for our peaches, and our sports teams favour the name Peach Kings.

It makes sense that a town that was the site of the 1813 Battle of the Forty would have some lovely homes and gardens.  This first garden, with its park setting, is in fact located on Park Street - the road that travels up the escarpment.  Under the escarpment, with a full canopy of trees, this is a gracious and elegant garden with a stone bridge and natural waterfalls.


This next front garden, in town, demonstrates what August abundance is about - golden sunflowers and pink Echinaceas all crowded into a butterfly-attracting display.  The subtle fence makes a pretty boundary for the garden to overflow.


This grand house is on Main Street.  It is an example of using the garden to emphasize the distinctive elegance of the architecture.  White on white seems perfect here.



There are many more Grimsby gardens to come - and they span from the 1700's through to the present. A big boom in the 1950's and then again in the 1980's put the peach orchards on the outskirts.  Then the collapse of the peach canning with the last plant closing in 2008 resulted in more vineyards.  There are still lots of peach trees to see in the countryside.  There are great peaches at the market now - at the end of August.

Friday, August 22, 2014

Painterly Effects in the Garden

I just got the Filter Forge software and have been trying it out.  It creates painterly effects, brush strokes and distortions so that the images have a sense of being digital art rather than photographs.






Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Sunshine Gardens and the Chrysanthemums

Hi everyone,
It's the time of year when the Chrysanthemums have been set out at Sunshine Nurseries.  They are located on Carlton Street just over the canal on the Niagara-on-the-Lake side.  We usually are looking for our particular colour or something that appeals to us.

If one looks up and around, though, there is a sea of green - and the panorama below shows part of it.  You won't see them all in bloom like tulips in Holland.  They get sold before there's too much colour showing.  Each pot has a drip hose to ensure perfect amounts of water and fertilizer.  The trimming and pruning follow the traditional sphere shape so when they are blooming there's a solid mass of colour.







Sunday, August 17, 2014

Lilycrest Gardens - Hybridizing Success

This is one of Brian Bergman's new hybrids.  Seeing as he's my brother, I am lucky to visit the field all the time, and see what's up.  The labels tell the story of what to keep and what will be deleted from the field.  A small group of seedlings will result in beautiful and blah.  One needs to label the beautiful to keep and get rid of the ones that didn't turn out. This is a small flower and plant with a big decorative impact.  It's my kind of garden lily.   



Saturday, August 16, 2014

The Potting Shed in Dunnville

I got to the Potting Shed in Dunnville just over a week ago and saw the day lilies in bloom.  Jack Kent is a remarkable hybridizer and has developed some beautiful new hybrids which are displayed nicely in gardens throughout the property and in growing houses.  Besides the gorgeous day lilies, there are a lot of hostas to choose from.  Of course, the Red Barn is the distinctive structure on the property and it is surrounded by pretty buildings that house goats and peacocks.

It's a great drive in the Niagara countryside and always wonderful to bring something distinctive back for the garden.













Saturday, August 9, 2014

Another Gorgeous Grimsby Garden

A corner garden has advantages for someone like me who enjoys gardens and particularly likes a corner garden that displays more garden than a front garden alone can. Here's Zoi Ouzas' garden on Deer Park in Grimsby.  The variations of green in ground cover and grass give a sense of lushness here.  The red flowers draw the eye along the curving line and focus the attention on the pretty curved arbour over the garden gate.  A beautiful work of garden art.

It makes sense that Zoi is in real estate - with a house and garden of such note. Here's her real estate website: http://www.zoiouzas.com








Friday, August 8, 2014

My Hosta Fantasy

l cut off most of the hosta flowers along the front garden this year.  With the mass showing, the weakness in their colour and uprightness is glaring.  By weakness in colour, I mean the light lavender colour.  It seems to take away from the green shades that contrast and complement each other.  In addition to that I have intense orange begonias and coleus to complement the colour of the front door and the yellow bricks.  As white would do wonderfully, perhaps I'll concentrate on some more Royal Standard Hostas for a nice end of season show.  And they have a beautiful fragrance, too.

So today, I worked a little in photoshop and turned the hosta in the foreground of this beautiful rural garden in Grimsby to a more pleasing shade.  I would like to try out a Crocosmia orange, but didn't manage to get photoshop to get to that colour.  If anyone knows the technique, I would appreciate a comment or a link.

Here's that lovely winding path with the pergola destination.




Thursday, August 7, 2014

Dewdrops in the Garden

I popped out to the garden early yesterday morning and found these wonderful dewdrops in the garden on one of the roses.  Just one. Other roses didn't have them even though they have the saw tooth leaves.  It seems like one of those mysteries.  So I went to Wikipedia, and perhaps the explanation is clear - the leaves are thinner than other roses.

"Dew is water in the form of droplets that appears on thin, exposed objects in the morning or evening due to condensation."

I also found many entries for Dewdrops in the Garden.  It was released 2 Aug 1994 by Deee-Lite.  The entries for Deee-Lite go on for pages...










Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Grimsby Gardens - Beautiful August Gardens

I wonder why there aren't garden tours in August.  There certainly are beautiful gardens.  This one is in Grimsby and has a wonderful display right now.  We see red Crocosmia, yellow Rubeckias, pink Echinaceae, and the soon-to-flower Sedum.  The wonderful architecture of the house and the pretty metal gate are the perfect setting for this beautifully designed display. 

So this garden tells us that August is a perfect garden month.  Besides the beautiful flowers in the garden, we might plant Day lilies and Hydrangeas.  They are perfect right now.  If you enjoy the Oriential Lilies, they scent the air and fill the garden with their large blooms in bright colours.  There's a beautiful array of yellow and gold in August - Helianthus, Helenium, Coreopsis, Yarrow and Rudbeckias.  There's a lot of  pinks, whites and lavenders with Phlox.  So there is a lot of floral colour in the garden in August.  

Usually, though, we have a bit of brown in our lawns.  This is not the case this year.  Everything is perfectly green.  It would be a great year for an August garden walk.







Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Grimsby Gardens - Cole's Nursery

Hi everyone,
I am lucky to have an old-fashioned garden centre in my neighbourhood in Grimsby.  This means that it still has summer perennials, annuals, and trees and shrubs for sale.  They actually get new plants in so I can spruce up my planters.

This is in contrast to the other greenhouses - Seaway on Lakeshore has cleared the greenhouses out of summer stock and has started the Poinsettias.  Sunshine's is 3/4's empty with gift pot plants, herbs, etc in the front section.  Almost all the perennials disappeared just over a week ago, probably to the hoop houses for repotting.  Of course the big box stores have eliminated the summer plant section.   I was at Valleybrook Nurseries, the wholeale perennial growers in the spring, and there were oceans of Superstore pots going off to delivery - what a lot of plants must be sold by the Supercentres.  

Cole's has a mass show of colour out front, including a lovely garden in front of the Christmas Cottage.  I took pictures on the weekend of the gardens, as they are recipients of a commercial Trillium award for 2014. I realized how big the beds are, and how many interesting plant selections there are in the beds this year.  Walking along the beds brought the realization of the care and creativity that went into the designs. 

Here's an extract of this history of this wonderful florist/greenhouse operation, including a picture of the original greenhouse:





Providing Fine Flowers For Over 100 Years

In 1891 Albert Edward Cole erected a 1,000 sqft greenhouse on the former sawmill property in Grimsby, and grew violets and vegetables. A.E. Cole’s three sons were involved at an early age selling vegetables and later delivering flowers by foot, horse and buggy or the street car that ran along Highway 8.
By 1930 the greenhouse was expanded to 25,000 sqft of the property! Cole’s three sons, John, Gordon and Norman, purchased the business in 1932 and more expansion followed as the floral industry grew. The children and grandchildren all worked to make it Cole’s a success!

In 1957 Norman Cole & Elizabeth became sole owners of the business and they ran the business together for 29 years. After 95 years of family ownership, Cole’s Florist was sold to Harry DeVries in 1986.


See more at: http://www.colesflorist.ca/history.php




Here we are in 2014, enjoying the wonderful gardens.