Toronto – Page 11

It was very hard for me to decide what photos to post for this weeks Green Thumb Sunday. Last weekend I was working in my garden planting annuals in hanging baskets, flower boxes and strawberry pots, but prior to getting started on my work I took a ton of photos of the garden. The garden was just full of rose, peony and clematis blooms .

Other plants were blooming as well … so how do I pick which photos to show you today? It was hard but I decided to focus on roses for this post since they were blooming in such abundance. If you want to see what my garden looked like last Saturday just take a look at the pictures in my Flickr account. I created a new folder for the start of summer and the photos in my Garden Summer 2008 folder are all the ones I took just last Saturday (146 pics!).

In this photo you can see how well my Climbing Iceberg roses are doing. I just planted this one last year! Other roses and plants that you can see are from Right to left – climbing iceberg, basket of coral colored impatiens waiting to be planted, Johnson’s blue geranium, hosta, peony Karl Rosenfield, Prince Napoleon (pink antique rose), Parade (climbing rose), William Baffin (pink hardy Canadian Explorer rose) and you just might be able to see Compte de Chambord as the last pink rose to the left. Of course you can also see phlox (not blooming) and many other plants.

Jam packed isn’t it?

En masse the garden was spectacular with all those roses blooming at once, however it was even more delightful to take a moment to view the roses up close. For example isn’t this Valencia hybrid tea rose just gorgeous?

Then there’s Dr. Huey – yes a weed rose.

The former owners of our house had one single rose, and when they moved they took it with them. Unfortunately they left some of the graft root behind and it started growing like crazy! I dug it up and moved it to an area that need a rose when I first started my garden – not knowing then that it was the graft root Dr. Huey. Since our winters don’t normally have a lot of snow this rose doesn’t always bloom well, but this year it’s blooming better than ever thanks to all the snow cover it had this winter. Oh yes and it’s about 14 feet tall!

If you like hardy roses with a bit of that wild rose look you might enjoy William Baffin. This rose produces flowers pretty much all summer long but I warn you this rose will take over your garden! It’s huge! We had to take a saw to some of it’s thick branches this year just to prune the darn thing. It’s like a tree.

I could go on and on with photos, but you get the idea. The roses were blooming and they were breath taking.

I’m going to try a new thing here and give a little linky love back to a few of out GTS participants each week.Â So each week either before or after I create my own Green Thumb Sunday post I’ll select five GTS members who’ve made a recent post and highlight their posts.Â I’ll select participants at random.Â All you need to do is make a post each Sunday and have at least one or two lines of text in your post for the software that I’m using to find your posts to work properly – ok?

So without further ado here are some highlights from five bloggers who particpated in this weeks Green Thumb Sunday meme:

Other Green Thumb Sunday posts to check out:

Green Thumb Sunday 06/29/08 – Green Thumb Sunday 06/29/08. I took this photo at Cafe Loco in Bellows Falls, VT. Cafe Loco is located at the Harlow Farms store and they had a ton of flowers all over the place. So I got many, many more for Green Thumb Sundayâ€™s to come.

Green Thumb Sunday: be my guest – I found this little guy on my patch of Chantenay Red Core carrots a couple of days ago. The carrot patches are jungles of insectsâ€“beetles, flies, the occasional ladybug, and this grasshopper. I looked up grasshoppers and I should have …

Green Thumb Sunday – I spent the greater part of Friday evening working in the yard planting both seeds as well as seedlings that should give me plenty of Green Thumb Sundays over the next few months. I planted a cherry tree, and apple tree, banana trees, …

Green Thumb Sunday: First carrots – First carrots. Iâ€™ve never managed to grow anything other than minute baby carrots before, so Iâ€™m quite proud of these Paris Market baubles that have grown in the Grow Dome. Join Green Thumb Sunday or check out the other participants.Â You must check out these carrots – they’re round!

Green Thumb Sunday thorns amid the roses, or dandelions amid the … – My GTS is just a little dose of reality, which I am constantly getting from my garden: We have some lovely thyme as a groundcover. Then I see (and today you can see it too!) the weeds amidst the beauty. I haven’t even gotten to this end …

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information. GTS participants remember to check in at As the Garden Grows each week so that we’ll know you made a new post!

Hens and Chicks in the garden

by Tricia

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When we first moved into our house it had a garden, but not a great garden. It had a lot of weedy plants that spread throughout the garden and even into the grass. I can’t remember the name of this simple green leafed plant, but it was everywhere and it’s notoriously invasive.

Other than the weedy plant that took about four years to completely get rid of, there were mainly veggies, rhubarb, raspberries, strawberries, lilies and what appeared to be a fairly young apple tree and pear tree – planted in the middle of the yard!

I know I’ve got a few pictures of what the garden looked like before we started landscaping, but I think they’re on my other computer. Anyway … you can probably picture it. It was pathetic!

At the front of the house, beside our very narrow driveway there’s a very small garden bed. This was filled with hens and chicks. They were straggly as they were trying to grow in a very shady area.

When I was planting new plants in my newly created raised garden beds in the spring of 2002 I moved most of the hens and chicks to the back garden beds. As you can see from the photo above they are thriving in the sunny backyard. Click on the photo for a larger view if you’d like – the larger photo is quite nice.

The Hens and Chicks (Sempervivum), particularly in this especially sunny area have spread out and grown into the crevices of the interlocking stones. They look lovely … even better after I’ve picked out the dead leaves and mulch that get stuck in them over winter!

As for that very shady garden bed? Once I removed the hens and chicks I planted shade loving plants like Bleeding heart, lily of the valley, a fern, hosta and in a less shady area a Stella D’ora daylily, plus a few other plants.

Actually, I spent some time today adding new plants to that small flower bed and later today I’ll be planting more plants (that I purchased two weeks ago!) in the front boulevard. I’ll tell you what I planted in a new post once I’m finished the job. Hopefully I’ll have a few photos too.

In the meantime … if you want to see an older picture of what my back yard garden looked like in July of 2003 – one year after most of the plants had been added to the garden, here you go:

The garden has matured quite a bit since that time and I’ve managed to add more plants! Oh and I’ve moved a few around too. So it looks similar … but different … better maybe.

Growing Monkshood

by Tricia

It’s amazing how many plants are coming up in my garden. Every time I either look outside or go outside to look at the garden I notice how much the plants have grown or new green shoots coming up in areas that were barren the day before.

The monkshood is already making an appearance:

This is Monkshood Aconitum Arendsii Azure Blue.

The new leaves are coming up amid the old stalks that I still have to remove! Usually I tidy up the garden beds in the fall, but I didn’t really do that last year. Even when I clean up the garden in the autumn I’ll often still leave a few plant stalks or a leaf or two so that come spring I can remember where the plant is planted.

I do have plant markers in the garden, but most have been there for four or five years now and they are barely legible or they’ve snapped in the cold so there’s only half of the plants name.

I grow another kind of Monkshood at the back of the garden near the holly shrub. It’s a bicolor Monkshood and I’ve forgotten it’s full name.

Now I know I have several photos of the Azure Blue Monkshood but I can’t find any of them right now. Odd. I do have a photo of the BiColor Monkshood as it’s beginning to bloom though.

The bicolor Monkshood usually blooms twice a season. Often once in July and then in Mid to Late September. The Azure Blue only blooms once in late August through into September.

Monkshood is very easy to grow, but you must remember that it’s a poisonous plant. I’m a little nervous about growing it now that we have a Labrador Retriever puppy, but I don’t think she’ll be allowed in the backyard very often and certainly not unsupervised.

Monkshood can be grown in shade or bright sunlight. It does best with at least 6 hours of bright sunlight each day. Depending on the species it grow from 30 inches to approx. 36 inches in height.

This plant does best in rich, moist, humusy soil. It doesn’t like being disturbed once it’s established but it can be propagated through division.

There are several species and hybrids of Monkshood. Some will rebloom if the flowers are removed shortly after they’ve finished blooming as with my bicolor monkshood and others are of the fall blooming variety.

Monkshood is a beautiful plant that adds a lovely touch of color to the garden bed. Even it’s foliage is attractive. Just remember that all parts of the plant are poisonous!

So many flowers how do I choose?

Hens and Chicks in the garden

Growing Monkshood

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