Digging Deep

Fran Sorin’s 10th Anniversary edition of Digging Deep,

Unearthing your creative Roots Through Gardening 

Author Fran Sorin offers such a clear song of hope in an era of ernest gardening.  This book offers garden guidance, motivation and inspiration to reframe your definition of gardening. So many gardeners are digging in their plants with a fear of doom and food appocolypse in their hearts.  If a gardener isn’t connected to the beauty and randomness of nature in gardening many will give up when the birds devour the first crop.   In these pages find you find a way to weave the everyday joy a garden offers as the essential work is done. You will know flowers are essential to feed the soul. This book will coach beginning gardeners, encourage the discouraged and inspire the devoted. If you are lucky enough to have a small patch of earth to tend, this book will speak to your heart and help you see you are indeed lucky enough....   Continue Reading

A Garden Love Story – Abkhazi Garden

“A Garden is a perpetual reminder that there are no shortcuts to the important things in life”.– Princess Peggy Abkhazi 

In Victoria, BC there are many fabulous gardens. The Abkhazi garden is an acre heritage site tucked away in a residential area of Victoria. This garden situated on a rocky ridge overlooks the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Olympic mountains. Peggy and Nicholas Abkhazi built this garden over a period of 40 years as an expression of their shared joy....   Continue Reading

Garden Conservatory – A Crystal Palace

It is citrus season.  Outside my door the oranges are ripening on an overloaded tree providing a surplus of the sweet fruit. If you don’t have a tree right outside your door, you can still find an abundance of the succulent fruit right down the street at your supermarket....   Continue Reading

Plants of Ice & Fire

The Royal Tasmanian Botanical Garden

A few years ago I had no idea where Tasmania was.  I remembered the Looney Tunes ® cartoon character of the Tasmanian Devil, but beyond that I knew little else.  Until this year, when I found myself in the Tasmanian Royal Botanical Garden in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, over 8000 miles from my garden....   Continue Reading

The Artichoke Project

Late last November I planted two Artichoke plants in a sunny spot in one of my new flower beds. I wanted something to grow fast and add some variety of color and shape to my view. They grew beautifully! By March their silvery-green leaves spiked up vigorously at both ends of the bed providing a framework for the smaller plants between them. The end of each symmetrical leaf was punctuated with a fine thistle tip....   Continue Reading

Floriade Nightfest

 In ancient times much of the world paused in their work to celebrate flowers.  Weary of winter and with food supplies running low the Roman Goddess Flora was celebrated. In the spring a Maypole was erected, ribbons streamed down and the dancing began.  Young women wore crowns of flowers in their hair. The beauty of life, flowers and fertility was thoroughly celebrated with the hope of a great harvest in the Fall.  The celebration lasted several days with games, performances, feasting and drinking.  Australia’s Floriade does just that!  By day the festivities are lit by the sun and by night lights multiply the magic of the celebration....   Continue Reading

Floriade, a Celebration of Spring!

Floriade is a annual Spring celebration of flowers, held in Commonwealth Park, Canberra, the Australian Capital. The month long celebration has been held for 27 years from mid Sept. to mid October. Over 1 million flowers are planted in the park and when the show opens this incredibly diverse community streams in with friends and family to inhale the fresh scent of spring weather. There is a huge ferris wheel designed to give riders a view of the patterned plantings and also a grand view of the city center. Carnival rides, seminars, lectures, musical performances of choirs, dancers, jugglers, are all part of the offerings. Yet in spring, flowers are the big show. Tulips, pansies, ranunculus, daffodils, hyacinths, flowering cabbages, iris are just some of the blossoms used in the designs. Parents pose their children in front of the beautiful colors struggling to get them to hold still and look at the camera. Then for just a moment realize as they look through the lens they are truly seeing the most beautiful elements of life, their children and nature’s glorious blooms. The park was filled with people, walking, pointing at the flowers, admiring the combinations of colors, eating ice cream, and talking as they experienced a beautiful day. Around lake Burley Griffin the deciduous trees are leafing out in bright green. An annual celebration of spring is a beautiful thing....   Continue Reading

Chinese Friendship Garden

In September it is spring in Sydney Australia and when we walked into the 2.5 acre Chinese Friendship Garden for a moment I thought this will be the same as other Chinese gardens. There were the quite wonderful textured rocks and the bonsai collection in the entry but there was something more, the garden was a full of color! There were orange clivias, lining the paths, rhododendrons and azaleas in shades of pink, and ruffled white. ...   Continue Reading