Category Archives: Your garden grows

Stories from the urban garden

Garden resolutions

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The community garden sleeps, so we make resolutions for 2013:

— take time to smell the roses, not beat the clock

— remember my fellow gardener Ralph Persad’s motto: you give you get

— help cut the grass — the Briggs and Stratton motor is the ninth wonder of the world, right behind the Sturmey Archer three-speed hub. Plus, clinical trials have proven that a volunteer community gardener mowing the grass on two dollars worth of gasoline experiences more joy than Steve Jobs got building his $200-milllion super yacht.

— try planting something different and radical — like brussel sprouts

— sharpen my spade and my sense of humour — does anyone know any good gardening jokes? I think that’s how Russell Peters got his start in comedy.

— support the volunteer committee that works hard to run our non-profit community garden at Thorncliffe Park

— leverage my folk carpentry skills to repair one side of my rectangular wooden fence; this means the fence will be whole by 2016 — the same time the Gardiner Expressway is condemned.

— be patient for once and don’t put the tomato plants in too early — NOT!!

— listen to my garden neighbors and share their stories.

10 reasons why you need a seed catalogue

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Dam, these are fine seeds1) Guarantees you will outlast the end of the Mayan calendar — the seed company in Dundas, Ontario knows something the Mayans don’t.

2) Great conversation starter at fancy dinner parties: “Have you heard about the new Atlantis hybrid miniature broccoli? How about the latest bolt-resistant Coriander Calypso variety?”

3) You’ve been mourning the loss of the Eaton’s catalogue since 1976; your garden seed catalogue is the next best thing.

4) Makes a great bathroom reader next to your dog-eared editions of Mad Magazine and the Economist.

5) Hastens the arrival of spring by a minimum of three weeks.

6) Heritage vegetable and flower seeds offset the guilt you feel purchasing the latest modified hybrids.

7) Your gardener father-in-law Claus piggybacks on your 2013 seed order and returns the form with cash tucked inside the envelope, which buys you a pint of Amsterdam and pizza after pick-up hockey.

8) You peruse fancy gardening tools such as the traditional English Half Moon Hand Hoe with Knob Handle, knowing that you are too cheap to fork out the 35 bucks and that you will enjoy that fancy implement in a subsequent life.

9) The 35 bucks you actually spend on your seed order will put some fine food on the table in 2013 and beats dropping $2,400 at Rama on a Friday night.

10) When the precious seeds arrive in a box from Canada Post, your nephew Felix helps you and Claus divvy the packets, because you have both forgotten what you ordered.

Something to learn — Interview with Ann McGuire

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After retiring as a teacher, Ann McGuire has a new career: life-long learner.

“In the garden, there is always something to learn – what to grow, how to grow it, when to harvest and how to cook or display it,” she says.

It’s late November at Thorncliffe Park Garden Club and the sun is about to set behind a lattice of hydro towers and wires stretching to the west.

Ann has been picking herbs including sage and parsley, and has pulled up the last of her carrots. This fall she’s experimenting with her leek crop: “This is the first time I’ve left them this long. One of the gardeners told me they taste sweeter after a touch of frost, so I will give it a try.” Her cluster of a dozen leeks looks vigorous, with the younger green shoots still spiking up, and the plants’ white cores continuing to thicken. They have already survived one decent frost and look like they are in for the long haul.

Ann started in the garden in the early 2000s after retiring as an elementary school teacher with the Toronto District School Board.

“Apart from some flowers on my balcony at my apartment, I was really a novice when it came to gardening,” she recalls.

The idea of a “Potager” garden appealed, based on the French garden tradition blending the beauty of flowering plants with ready access to herbs, vegetables and berries. Ann recalls that a few of the garden old-timers scoffed at the idea of space wasted on non-vegetable crops. They were used to maximizing production of beans, onions, tomatoes and greens on their small rectangular allotments. Flowers were low on the pecking order.

At the same time they gave her some good advice. “Andy would drop by to tell me what to plant when, and how to space vegetables to get a better harvest.”

She had other gardening mentors.

Her niece Kimberley’s husband Liam grew up in a gardening family in Ireland. He taught Ann how to prune roses so the tips grow out, giving the blooms space, and how to fertilize the soil and build up the plant’s base to protect it over winter.

Her Queen Elizabeth rose was a gift from her mom Lillian, and is a reminder of her mom’s strength. “My father Bill was one of four welders in Canada who did specialized work on refinery construction and other big projects. He worked on construction across the country.” Ann’s father died young — in his 40s — of lung cancer and there was no insurance.

“My mom was a housewife with three children at home. She had been a Red Cross nurse so she went back to school in ’57 in the first class for Registered Nursing Assistants at Women’s College Hospital. She became the breadwinner.” In retirement, Ann’s mom also lived in the Thorncliffe Park neighborhood and visited Ann’s garden often.

As a novice gardener, Ann learned about rhubarb growing from her new garden friend Pauline, who shared a recipe for rhubarb squares. Garden neighbor Linda provided a recipe for baked zucchini stuffed with meat, vegetables and spices.

But it’s about more than watering, weeding and enjoying the harvest. Ann and her friend Arielah find shady spots around the community garden during the summer to hone their Scrabble skills.

Ann and Arielah

As the late November sun sets, and the horizon blooms dark purple, Arielah has dropped by to say hi. She’s been busy putting her garden to bed for the winter. A chill is in the air and gardening days are numbered.

Ann’s life-long learning extends well beyond the garden.

“I like to take courses to learn more about something I know and appreciate, but also to try something new. I believe that you learn as long as you live,” she says.

Through the University of Toronto’s Later Life Learning program, she recently attended a course celebrating Ten Musical Masterpieces. “Rick Phillips, who hosted the Sound Advice radio show on CBC, was our lecturer. He helped the class understand classical pieces from a musical and historical point of view. After playing a recorded clip, he would use his keyboard to break down and discuss elements of the music.” Classics from Bach, Stravinsky, Berlioz and Mozart were on the top-10 agenda.

“Something new” included a course on opera. “I actually took this course because I had never liked opera but wanted to understand and appreciate it.” Ann also completed courses in art history and jazz appreciation.

Her love of music started at an early age – “my mom says I sang at my own Christening when I was two years old. I didn’t know the words but apparently I sang my own version of a hymn.” Today, Ann sings in the Toronto Choristers, a choir comprised of retired educators who practice regularly and are gearing up for a Christmas concert at a North York church in December.

On the gardening front, she has enjoyed attending garden shows to learn about new plants, ideas and techniques.

Ann has given back to the non-profit community garden, serving on its volunteer board for many years. One of the programs she coordinated involved deliveries of fresh vegetables to the Scott Mission’s daily food program downtown. One of the first residents of Thorncliffe high-rises built in the late 60s, Ann has seen the neighborhood grow into what Globe and Mail journalist Doug Saunders describes as an “Arrival City” for people from around the world – and home to Canada’s largest elementary school. “I’ve changed apartments but really wanted to stay in the neighborhood.”

The sun is down now and a cool wind is accelerating across the 100-plus plots at the community garden. This winter Ann will take a page of graph paper and plot out a new Potager garden design. “I like to change things up every year, although sometimes those plans go out the window. I will see some Pansies on sale in the spring – and I start to rearrange everything to find spaces for the new plants.”

The cool breeze has induced mild hypothermia in both the blogger and the interview subject, so we retreat to Ann’s car where she shares some recent photos of her garden. In one, Ann sits in her garden under a green and white umbrella in the middle of her Potager plot. Pink roses blend with Dill. Purple flowers in the foreground give way to towering Tomato plants. A homemade noisemaker – made out of a foil pie plate suspended by string from a tall pole – is intended to ward off the occasional deer that visit the garden from the Don Valley to nibble on summer greens.

“The garden is a true community, and it’s my sanctuary,” says Ann.

A place to teach and learn.

Ann’s gardening friend Pauline passed away earlier this year. Ann promises to email Pauline’s recipe for Rhubarb squares. With the winter solstice less than a month away, the dark purple sky has already faded to black by 5:30 p.m.

Come spring, it will be time for a Rhubarb treat.

RHUBARB MERINGUE SQUARES

CRUST

  • 1/2 cup butter, softened
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1 TBSP sugar

FILLING

  • 3 eggs separated
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 2 TBSP flour
  • 1/2 cup half & half cream
  • 2 1/2 cups cut up rhubarb

MERINGUE

  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • egg whites

Mix butter, flour, sugar.  Press into 9×9 pan.  Bake at 350 for 10 min

Mix egg yolks, sugar flour, salt and cream, stir in rhubarb.  Pour over baked crust and bake 45 min.

Make meringue.  Spread over mixture and bake 10 – 15 min. until nicely browned.

A special spring treat!

Praying for a proper pumpkin

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It’s 19 days to Halloween and you are concerned that your three volunteer pumpkins may not turn orange in time.

Let’s define a volunteer pumpkin. Back in May, you dropped a load of compost at your allotment plot at Thorncliffe Park Garden Club. The compost contained seeds from the 2011 pumpkins that had framed the steps to your front door.

Two hundred and fifty children had run the gauntlet past your 2011 pumpkins last Halloween. How do you know the exact number? Because your spouse had purchased 250 mini chocolate bars from the Loblaws Superstore, and when the last Kit Kat had vanished, you had turned out the front lights and cowered upstairs, hoping the doorbell would not ring again, but knowing that some worldly-wise older kids who were too cool to wear costumes would still thump your front door at 9:30 p.m. to trick or treat, well aware that you were hiding out with the candles blown out and the lights off.

(Okay, maybe 243 kids if we do the math: 250 mini chocolate bars, minus the four Kit Kats and 3 Oh Henry!s you scarfed down in between rings of your doorbell and pretending to calmly read Heather Mallick’s latest column in the Toronto Star).

Your 2012 compost pile sprouted some interesting vegetable “volunteers.” A telltale pair of rounded leaves growing quickly signalled a pumpkin plant in the making. You let it live and take its nitro-nourishment from the decomposing pile.

Thinking back to your days as a rookie allotment gardener, you knew that one pumpkin plant was plenty. You had learned that lesson the hard way. In your first year at the garden, you had planted a half dozen pumpkin seedlings, and each had run rampant in the summer months, squishing your leeks, throttling your tomatoes, sumo-wrestling your red currant bushes into submission, and threatening to lay seige to your neighbors’ orderly garden plots.

Yes, one pumpkin plant was plenty. And your 2012 “volunteer” was quickly filling every available crevice of your plot with its prickly vines and broad leaves.

Soon, three pumpkins sprouted on orange blossoms. You went on holiday and your plot neighbor Azeem kindly daily-doused your volunteer pumpkin with water while you huffed and puffed along the coastal trails of Cinque Terra. On your return, you found triplets — three decent-sized green pumpkins attached to the umbilical cord of your volunteer vine.

You wanted to let your volunteer pumpkins ripen to an orange hue. But by late September they were big enough that some of your garden plot neighbors began to worry. In polite terms, they suggested that your plump pumpkins might take a walk. Better to pick them now, knowing that a modest-sized green pumpkin in hand is worth more than three orange prize-winners in the hands of garden thieves. Your garden neighbor Andy was more blunt: “Pick them up!” he shouted. “Somebody gonna pick ’em for you.”

So you loaded the green pumpkins into the hatch of your minivan, and stuffed the dying vines into brown yard-waste bags.

Several weeks later, and with Halloween fast approaching, your trio of pumpkins are still green.

Your spouse is getting ready to purchase this year’s ration of 250 mini chocolate bars. But you are starting to sweat it. Will a trio of oval-shaped green pumpkins attract children to your house?  Will you neighbors think this is some kind of statement? Can you even carve a green pumpkin? Are these not pumpkins but some kind of mutant hybrid squash?

James Taylor’s lyric runs through your head and you curse yourself, knowing that you really should have waited until the frost was on the pumpkin, and the hay was in the barn — and your dark green pumpkins had turned a lovely orange in time for Halloween.

But there are still 19 days left, and maybe you can place your pumpkins at a good angle to take in the sun on your front porch, and you live in hope.

Perpetual harvest — Interview with Ralph Persad

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While some think about putting their gardens to bed while the days grow shorter, Ralph Persad is getting in a second crop of greens.

The long-time gardener at Thornciffe Park Garden Club is planting spinach, radish and Bok Choi for harvest throughout late October and November. Meanwhile, his mainstay crops are enjoying a renaissance. After summer dry spells, the tomato vines have started to set new fruit on yellow blossoms, and his pepper plants are getting a second wind.

In fact, with multiple crop cycles — and a little help from his freezer at home — Ralph enjoys a kind of perpetual harvest.

“I grow a lot of hot peppers and freeze them all,” Ralph says.  “I take them out whenever I need them throughout the year and blend them into sauce.”

He also freezes tomatoes straight from the vine. “When it’s time to make tomato sauce in the winter, you hold the frozen tomato under some hot water.” There are no frozen tomatoes close at hand in the East York Town Centre food court at the moment, so Ralph demonstrates using an imaginary one. He crunches his fist and the imaginary tomato’s skin pops off nicely. An interviewer can almost smell the sauce starting to simmer.

Frozen bitter melon, long beans and other greens also put food on Ralph’s table year round.

“They say bitter melon is good for the blood. You can fry it up with some onion, garlic and a little olive oil. It goes nicely with a pita and some melted cheese.”

Ralph comes by food-growing honestly, having helped his parents work a 26-acre mixed farm near Rio Claro, Trinidad as a boy.

“Before school, I was up at 5:30 to milk the cows, and I would deliver the milk in bottles on my bike to local customers.

Ralph wasn’t compensated for the milking duties, but his father did offer a 50-cent bounty on squirrels. “They would nibble our cocoa pods and bananas so they were considered pests. After milking the cows, I would try to shoot a few squirrels before school. The dogs got the squirrel meat and the tail went to my dad as proof so I could collect the bounty.”

Ralph’s parents both ran small businesses during the day but also produced bananas, mangoes, coffee, cocoa and oranges on their farm. Ralph would pick the oranges on demand – 4 cents each for 100 – for a woman who upsold them as snacks for 6 cents each outside a local movie theatre. The family also had a “cooking garden” near the house to produce greens year-round.

His uncle was working for the TTC in Toronto and invited the teenaged Ralph up from Trinidad for a few weeks in the summer of 1970. Ralph recalls the vibrant scene on Yonge Street when a long stretch south of Bloor was closed off in the summer as a car-free music and culinary mecca.

In short order, Ralph completed a welding course at a school on Jarvis Street, and obtained his welding licence, a work permit and a welding job at a hot water heater manufacturer. When the company moved out of Toronto, Ralph followed in his uncle’s footsteps by joining the TTC.  He brought his welding skills and upgraded his electrical, machine-shop and lock-smith talents as an all-purpose trouble-shooter for maintenance of TTC properties.

Around the same time, Ralph got back to his food-growing roots when a friend invited him to see his garden plot at the Thorncliffe club, one of Toronto’s oldest community gardens.

“I call it my backyard,” says Ralph of his small rectangular garden loaded with organic vegetables. “I go there, listen to my gospel music. I can sit and meditate. I relax and play a game of cards with my plot neighbor, or start a conversation with people passing by.”

More than 100 plots at the community garden — on hydro land north of Overlea Boulevard — offer fresh air, friendship and fresh produce for Thorncliffe residents and their families.

“This is my therapy,” he says. “When my garden grows nice, I sleep better. I put my head on the pillow and nothing bothers me.” A diet of organic vegetables, and daily exercise including running, doesn’t hurt.

Ralph learned new growing techniques for the Canadian climate from garden plot old-timers and likes to return the favour to younger gardeners.”  He says he’s still learning. In fact, he has his eye on a radish-like green grown by Indian gardeners that is reputed to be good for the heart.

At 61, the man of the perpetual harvest is still in perpetual motion at his job. But he’s planning retirement soon. He will work part-time with one of his sons, who has a heating/cooling business. And he wants to offer his energy and talents to the developing world.

“In life, you give, you get.”

Garden gymnastics

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In literary criticism class, you learned about “close reading” of a text. This often meant ignoring the story for the sake of deconstructing the book through a political or cultural lens.

What they should have taught you was a truly important life skill – let’s call it “close weeding.”

Who needs a personal trainer when you can drag your body through the motions of close weeding — and a variety of other gymnastics — in the safety of your own garden?

Close weeding

Close weeding TM means strapping on kneepads and crawling inch by inch through your garden rows, plucking away competitors such as crabgrass, unwanted volunteer raspberry roots, pretty but intrusive wild violets, or rampaging bindweed.

Each weed needs a different strategy. In the case of crabgrass, a sharp tug may break the grass from the roots, so you need a slow, steady pull to get the root bundle to release from the soil.

By contrast, eliminating bindweed requires a 10-year strategic plan and multi-pronged tactical assaults. Bindweed will easily give up its slender shoots and pretty blossoms, like a lizard gives up its tail to a predator. Persistent weeding of the shoots does sap the strength of the plant, but your strategic plan needs to tackle the roots as well. They bundle into tight white masses under stone pathways, and in forgotten corners of the garden. The roots may be several feet deep and require slow coaxing, and years of patience and repeated Close weeding TM, to the get them out.

Close weeding TM promotes ambidexterity. After 30 minutes of dedicated weeding, the wrist of your dominant hand is screaming in protest, and it’s time to switch.  To count down the transition, use the “four more, three more, two more” 20-minute workout method that you learned in the 1980s while sitting on the couch, watching other people exercise on TV.

The beauty of Close weeding TM? At the end of the day, if your aching knees allow, you can stand back to see the big-picture story of your garden, with your vegetable and flower protagonists advancing the plot, unencumbered by their weedy, villainous competitors.

Did I mention the fringe benefit of Popeye-like forearms?

Garden gymnastics let your plant protagonists blossom.

Rock it out

The rock garden presents a special opportunity to combine art and athleticism. You could call it Rock Garden Tai Chi.

To nurture your special patches of Flox and Lilies planted amidst decorative chunks of the Canadian Shield, and given your balance isn’t what it used to be when you were a teenager, you will need to assume the position of a Hermit Crab.

Scuttle on all fours from rock to rock. Get grounded near your patch of plants and initiate weeding, watering and mulching. As a Hermit Crab, consider adopting an umbrella as your temporary shell/home, to save on 60-weight sunscreen. Be careful to avoid spontaneous celebrations, which can cause you to stand up, pump your fists, and twist your ankle as your foot loses purchase on a rock.

Instead, scuttle again to the next plant cluster, and be sure crank your neck around to check for nosy neighbors who may be laughing at your garden gymnastics.

Let them laugh. You know that if you weren’t feeling so mellow from the meditative benefits of Rock Garden Tai Chi, your gardener’s martial arts techniques would allow you to beat them silly – in self-defence, of course.

To mitigate your sore back, quads, knees and neck the morning after, ask your family physician about the benefits of a proactive dose of Ibuprophen and Guinness.

Garden cardio

Who said gardening can’t provide a good workout for your heart and lungs, in addition to your muscles?

Sheep manure medicine ball – as the gardening season matures, good quality composted sheep manure can be found at $10-for-5-bags at your local grocer. The blood starts to flow when you see the “blow out” price, but you can really get your heart beating hauling those bags from the store to your SUV. As an added workout, bring your spouse, and use each sheep manure bag as a medicine ball. The workout resumes when you must haul each bag from your car to your garden.

5-K worm run – like sheep manure, worms enrich your garden. They produce nutrient-rich castings, with the added bonus of aeration as they bore tunnels through the soil. Wait for a light rain on a spring day. Strap on your track pants and running shoes. Poke holes in the plastic lid of a tin coffee can, and place a small amount of moist earth in the can. Take the can along on your 5-K run and scan for big moist earthworms on the sidewalk. Pick them up, pop them in your coffee tin and fasten the lid, as worms are escape artists. Run fast so you can beat the Robins and commercial worm-pickers. The excitement of finding a juicy earthworm will move the dial on your heart rate from “maintenance” to “fat burner” mode. During your cool-down phase, reward yourself with an ice-cap at the Tim Horton’s drive-through.

The dreaded John Jeavons double dig – Purchase a copy of the iconic John Jeavons how-to manual about growing tons of vegetables on less land than you can imagine. The less-land thing is related to Jeavons’ more-muscle soil preparation method, which involves two stages of deep digging, wrestling with a sharpened spade, and much grunting. It’s said to be the cardio equivalent to the Iron Man competition. Use this as a last resort if your other gardening cardio methods are not available.

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So lose the personal trainer.

And reap the benefits of cardio, meditation, self-defence techniques and Close weeding TM, in the safety and beauty of your garden gymnasium.

Wild in the garden — Interview with Linda Piwowarski

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Refuelling for the migration north.

The Rose-breasted Grosbeak has found a way station at Thorncliffe Park Community Garden.

After a winter in South America and the Caribbean, he is migrating north for the summer breeding season.

But the bird feeders at Thorncliffe are tempting. He’s checked in to refuel. His black cape, white belly and red breast add a splash of colour, and his song a new melody, to the feeding station at the east end of the garden, overlooking Toronto’s Don Valley ravine.

“He’s back this year and he’ll stay for 10 days or so,” says gardener and Thorncliffe Park resident Linda Piwowarski. “Then he’s off to Manitoulin Island and further north in Ontario for the summer.”

Retired from a Toronto financing company, Linda is the pied piper of wildlife at the community garden. And the Rose-breasted Grosbeak has fallen under her spell.

“He has a beautiful song, and he’s not shy. He’s quite happy for me to get close to him while he is feeding.”

He’s not the only one. Winged friends ranging from Cowbirds to Sparrows, from Blue Jays to Red Winged Blackbirds, and from Finches to Woodpeckers, recognize Linda’s black compact car as it turns from Beth Nealson road into the community garden, located on hydro land. They know it’s feeding time. “The Blue Jays will actually screech at me if they think I am not fast enough with the bird seed,” Linda notes.

She feeds the birds daily throughout the year and each one has a story to tell.

“Mallard ducks will come up from the valley for a week or so. There is a pair that resides in the valley near the Science Centre. The male will bring his wife up to the garden for a rendezvous, so to speak. He struts and marches around and she follows him. They are quite a pair.”

Sometimes tame birds such as Canaries and Budgies, which have flown their suburban coops, will visit for a meal.

Several varieties of Woodpeckers including Downy and Hairy stop by for a bite before finding a mature tree to knock holes in, creating a future source for tasty insects and bugs.

In winter, chickadees join some of the birds that stay put in T.O.

On the daily menu?  A healthy offering of mixed birdseed, sunflower seeds, peanuts, almonds, suet, and raisins.

Bird-feeding time at Thorncliffe Park

Linda is also the steward of a burgeoning variety of four-legged wildlife.

“The Don Valley is greening up” she says — species have moved back in or extended their range. Deer will climb the ravine hill to the community garden at dusk, sneak bites of lettuce, carrots and other vegetables, and leave hoof prints in gardens, along with the telltale powerful scent of their urine. Some gardeners ward them off with mesh fencing.

Likewise, as of last year, a Coyote is now on the scene. While gardeners use bloodmeal to repel creatures such as squirrels, it seems to have the opposite effect on a Coyote. “He dug up all my tulips trying to get at the bloodmeal,” recalls Linda.

Rabbits, squirrels, groundhogs and the odd raccoon round out the list of creatures.

Then there was Solomon the Cat. One day, Linda noticed a Siamese cat lounging near the bird feeders. He was surely lost, and had a tag, so Linda took him home, and phoned the owner. Turns out the wily cat had prowled all the way across the Valley from the Flemingdon Park neighborhood. Solomon’s owner drove over to Thorncliffe Park to retrieve him and thanked Linda.

But…

The cat came back… the very next day.

“He must like it here,” says Linda. But she will keep an eye on Solomon’s birdly ambitions.

Linda has been a Thorncliffe Park resident since the 1960s, when a new community of high-rises, schools, churches, services and a shopping plaza had replaced an old horse-racing track on the site. The Thorncliffe Park Garden Club is one of the city’s oldest community gardens, started by volunteers in the early 1970s.

“A girl-friend of mine lived on the same floor or our apartment building and we would go for walks after work,” recalls Linda. “Her mother-in-law had a plot at the garden club. It was really peaceful there, and something different to do outdoors.”

Linda applied for a plot and has been gardening – and taking care of the birds – ever since. “I started with a small feeder in my own plot, and when a cardinal landed on it, I was amazed. It kind of grew from there.” For the past several years, she has also served on the non-profit community garden’s executive committee, supporting more than 100 local gardeners and their families.

The bird feeding station with its few donated chairs and tables also acts as a scenic lookout and social space for gardeners seeking a break from weeding and watering. Today, Ann and Arielah have dropped by for a game of Scrabble in the sun-dappled shade. With two triple-scores so far.

Feeding the birds is a joy and a responsibility. “I don’t take holidays,” Linda admits. “In a way, this is my holiday each day.”

“It’s so peaceful here and the birds and animals can teach us a lesson about how to get along.”

Garden gifts

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Perennials declare themselves in spring, like a photographic image emerging in a darkroom tray.

And, in the end, the love you take… is equal to the love you make.

Lennon and McCartney were likely thinking of gift-giving in the garden when they penned this musical footnote to the Beatles’ classic Abbey Road album.

Garden gifts are living keepsakes – with the memory and meaning of the giver permanently attached to the perennial plant now growing in the receiver’s garden.

All in the family

When my parents started a family in their almost-new Don Mills bungalow in the early 1960s, they dug in several Forsythia shrubs to line the front of their home.

My mom Sheila took cuttings from the shrubs when the snow was still on the ground. Placed in a vase of water, the Forsythia cuttings bloomed indoors to hasten the arrival of spring.

During my parents’ move years later from the family home to a condo, my mom gifted me with a final Forsythia cutting. I discovered that the cuttings root easily outdoors with some TLWWW – tender-loving watering, weeding and waiting.

My mom’s cutting found a good spot in our front garden in Riverdale. Today, 8 years later, my propagated Forsythia shows off its bold yellow bloom in spring, and optimistic greenery throughout the growing season.

I have returned the favour over the years with small perennial gifts for Sheila’s garden. Some recent examples include Trillium bulbs, Lily of the Valley with their tender white bell blooms, and strawberry plants. The strawberries are spreading a second generation across my mom’s new guerilla garden, located in the public park near her condo.

The gifted perennials surround a small circular garden she has dug around an old hollow log stump. Inside the stump bloom red geraniums, which she tends daily.  Passersby in the park often stop by to comment on this small jewel of a garden in a public park near Norman Ingram elementary school.

 “Gifts” from the abandoned garden

Our cottage neighbors Harry and Christine haven’t been seen in three years. Word is they moved to the west coast. Their Minden cottage lot, in the Haliburton region, is sprouting volunteer poplar and sand-cherry trees. Several Minden phonebooks wrapped in plastic linger on the steps. But the rhubarb patch Harry and Christine planted years ago has taken nicely in the sunny south side of a small hill.

On a May weekend, the rhubarb is mighty tempting and will surely go to waste. Plus the act of harvesting will stimulate the plant, I tell myself. With a promise of dessert for dinner at the in-laws, I pay a clandestine visit to Harry and Christine’s rhubarb patch.

To pick rhubarb, you need to investigate each cluster, zero in on the older, outer stalks, and preserve the young stalks at the heart of the cluster. To harvest, the thumb slides down to the deep red base of the stalk, and pushes hard before snapping the stalk up. The large floppy leaves may be used as a mulch around tomato seedlings that are just going in with the first heat wave of the season.

This act of rhubarb piracy turns into a fair trade when I spark up the gas mower, cut the grass on Harry and Christine’s property, and plant a mixed flower basket gift in the planter near the front door — to give the place a lived-in look. And possibly ward off cottage burglars.

Thank you, Harry and Christine, for the rhubarb. It was stewed by my wife Nadine with sugar and strawberries and served as a compote atop some Kawartha Dairy vanilla ice cream.

The inherited garden

Over at Thorncliffe Community Garden, on hydro land just north of Toronto’s “arrival city” of Thorncliffe Park highrises, my new garden declares itself. I’ve decided to change plots to a more open area of the garden, with fewer fences, and closer to the wildlife at the edge of the ravine. A new garden in spring is like a photograph emerging in the chemical tray of a darkroom, before the digital age. It’s an act of wonder and patience on the part of the photographer, as the image emerges.

This spring, peonies, rhubarb, chives, and raspberry canes have sprouted in my new garden, and a grand-daddy red currant bush sets a promising crop of berries. The plants are all gifts from the plot’s previous owner, Stacey, who has recently moved.  She came by to pick up a favourite gooseberry bush, and gifted me several dozen perennial flowers and herbs that border her garden plot, leaving them be. I will honor the gift by keeping the plants, and fill in the gaps with some tomatoes, peas, potatoes, beans and carrots. How can I repay this gift? I’ve offered to divide the Peony in fall for its original owner, I’ve left some plants in my old plot which I hope the owner can use, and have made recent green donations to fellow gardeners.

In fact, Linda has dropped by on her way to feed the birds. She is the steward of the community garden’s burgeoning wildlife population, the topic for a future blog. “Do you need any gladiola bulbs?” I ask. Linda knows I’m likely flush on gladiolas in the same way she was once flush on Irises.

She takes a handful of bulbs for her garden, possibly to humour me — a footnote that will be the prequel to future garden gifting.

Miracles and disasters in the urban garden

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About this time of year you’ll start to hear the hype about the miracle garden:

Grow 800 pounds of organic produce on a postage-stamp-sized plot – in just minutes a week! Garden yourself to victory in the coming food security apocalypse — without even getting your hands dirty!

But if you’re planning to roll up your sleeves to grow food in the city, don’t plan on the miracles unless you’re prepared to sweat some major disasters.

Or to put a more positive spin on life in an urban garden — every garden disaster makes each garden miracle that much sweeter.

That’s one of the lessons you’ve learned from Joe, Athena, Robert, Carmen, Andy and your many gardening comrades in ten years at one of Toronto’s oldest allotment gardens. Not to mention the escapades of the mysterious red currant thief.

Disaster: the squash devil

One year you planted several varieties of squash in a raised bed fortified with much well-rotted manure. Using your limited carpentry skills honed from childhood tree-fort building in Don Mills, you constructed a kind of folk-art trellis upon which you imagined your squash plants would rocket their way skyward.

You kept the bed well watered and the plants burst from the soil — the rocketing had begun. Yet while the green foliage showed the desired vigour, one by one, every single delicate yellow bloom withered on the squash vine.

One day your allotment neighbor, Joe, identified the culprit – a small black-and-yellow bug that feasted on squash blossoms. “He’s a devil,” said Joe, showing you the bug before squishing him between his thumb and forefinger.

Joe and Athena

You trusted Joe. He and his wife Athena, retired from the restaurant trade, grew an orderly Greek-themed garden filled with tomatoes, beans, onions and tasty greens. They enjoyed the long summer evenings in late June on lawn chairs outside their plot. Joe ferried fresh produce daily back to his nearby apartment on a rickety blue bicycle. Joe’s secret to gardening was soil preparation, and he spent days carefully hand-tilling his plot each fall, to be ready for the next growing season.

And Joe knew his pests.“You gotta pick off every bug and kill ‘em,” Joe said, proceeding to smear the bug on your garden fence, possibly as a warning to the devil’s comrades.

This minutes-a-week-to-gardening-victory thing just wasn’t working. You figured if you quit your desk job you could keep up with the devil-squishing. But you needed to pay the mortgage.

So your plants continued to rocket skyward that summer without producing a single squash. It was a garden disaster.

Miracle: the onion volunteers

But think back a little further and you will recall a garden miracle.

You had been two years on the waiting list for a plot at the Thorncliffe Park Garden Club, when you got the call. The club president, an elegant retired railway engineer named Robert, phoned to welcome you to the club. You had your piece of paradise – a 12×20-foot garden in full sunlight in a hydro corridor near Toronto’s Thorncliffe neighborhood.

Robert — who with his wife Carmen nourished a gorgeous mixed garden of vegetables and flowers — accepted your $20 fee, and showed you your plot number 6. It didn’t look like much on a cold April day: just a patch of dirt surrounded by a 2-foot wooden fence in reasonable repair.

But poking through the ground were green “volunteers” – several varieties of onion, and a multitude of garlic shoots.

You carefully dug up the volunteers, prepared a patch of soil, and arranged them in neat rows. Robert dropped by in his broad-brimmed hat and khakis to offer encouragement. “I have some elephant garlic bulbs for you, my dear,” he added. (In addition to his generosity in sharing plants and produce, he punctuated some sentences with this gender-neutral term of endearment, perhaps a turn of phrase from his native Ceylon).

Spring greens at Thorncliffe

You reciprocated by lending him some muscle to move a mountain of earthworm-laced soil to his plot – a special delivery from a farm outside the city. You and Robert were both out of breath following the shoveling workout, and rewarded yourselves with a shared thermos of coffee and a few minutes of peace in the community garden.

Later that summer, you pulled up the plants and took home your onion bounty, placing it in the basement to dry.

The onions and garlic from that summer fortified your home-made soups for many months that winter. The capper was when your daughter Colleen wolfed down a bowl of the house special and asked “Are there seconds?”It was a garden miracle.

Disaster: the red currant thief

But then, there was the case of the red currant thief.

You’re not talking about a guy who sneaks into the garden at night and steals the little red currant berries that dangle in delicate clusters from the currant foliage.

This guy took the whole bush.

The previous summer, you had proudly guided your spouse Nadine, daughters Alison and Colleen, and step-brother Stefan to your red currant patch, where they had picked bags full of berries. That weekend you spent a night at the stove at your inlaws’ cottage, boiling the berries into little pots of clear currant jam. Your father-in-law Claus stopped by to offer free advice during the critical gelling stage.

Your gardeners’ pride was compounded by the fact that you had successfully propagated the plants by taking cuttings in the fall. You had planted the cuttings and then carefully tended the new bushes over several years as the berry production slowly increased.

It was an unusually warm day in late March the next spring, and you had come back to the garden to admire your pruning job on my three red currant bushes.

But where your middle currant bush once stood now gaped… a crater. The thief hadn’t even bothered to backfill the hole from which he had wrenched your bush, roots and all.

When it comes to crime, you can’t go much lower than stealing an honest man’s shrub.

Miracle: best boy special delivery

But you forgive the shrub thief by remembering the miracle of the Best Boy special delivery.

It was a scorching summer in T.O., a summer for heat-lovers. And you’re talking tomatoes.

Another garden plot neighbor, Andy, had taken to giving you regular advice in a very direct manner, and booming voice, on many gardening subjects. Andy was the Thorncliffe Park Garden Club’s number 1 “fixer.” When he wasn’t working his own plot, Andy could be found sawing and hammering away doing odd jobs on neighbors’ plot fences, and going for coffee runs in his aging but immaculate silver Volvo.

Your first inclination was to play dumb, or to avoid this nosy gardening neighbor — until Marina set you straight.

“Listen to the old man,” said Marina, who grew bitter-melon and other exotic (to you) vegetables. “He knows what he’s talking about.”

Andy decreed that the best tomato seedlings could be found at small garden shop on Pape Avenue. You parked illegally across the road and jay-ran over to spot the shop’s last flat of tomato seedlings. The price was a steep but the seedlings had thick sturdy cores and healthy leaves, and an intriguing brand name: Best Boy.

Andy took pity on your initial attempt to plant the seedling plants, brushing you aside to show you how to dig them a little deeper and to pick off the lower stems, helping the Best Boys set down a good root system.

In the heat of that summer you had a bumper crop. You convinced your older daughter Alison to join you for the harvest.

You picked baskets of deep red unblemished tomatoes, and set them in the trunk of your red Echo. You two put aside a good quantity for home use, and proceeded to play a pair of tomato Robin Hoods, driving through Toronto’s Riverdale streets to bestow a surprise gift of Best Boys upon friends and neighbors.

It was a miracle of miracles in the urban garden.

Family garden set to bloom in Thorncliffe — Interview with Amy Sutherland

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In a dusty rectangle in one of Toronto’s most dense urban neighborhoods, community volunteer Amy Sutherland reveals the space where a new community garden will bloom. The Thorncliffe Family Garden is the latest in a series of enhancements to a previously neglected park at the heart of the Thorncliffe Park community.

R.V. Burgess Park is undergoing a renaissance ignited by the imagination and energy of Amy and fellow members of the Thorncliffe Park Women’s Committee.

Amy Sutherland

“The park is really like a village square,” she says. “It connects the school, the library, community centre, apartment buildings, and the shops.”

The community is no small village – its high rise apartments are home to about 30,000 people. The local elementary school is Canada’s largest, with close to 2,000 students, she notes. Named one of the world’s major “arrival cities” by Globe and Mail journalist Doug Saunders, Thorncliffe Park is a destination for new Canadians from around the world.

Largely hidden from view from the surrounding roads, the neighborhood’s central park – R.V. Burgess — had fallen on tough times. A popular wooden playground had been dismantled due to insurance concerns and not replaced. Dirt paths cut through the grass, revealing the park’s place as a pedestrian crossroads, but proving slippery and muddy when wet.  A children’s summer splash pad had deteriorated and its water feature malfunctioned. The few older park benches were in poor shape and the park maintenance shed and other features had been vandalized.

Amy and five other local moms felt the neighborhood deserved better; they got together as a committee to start the change process and “get things done.”

“It was a matter of drawing attention to these issues, and making the right connections with community partners,” she says.The group approached the Toronto Parks, Forestry and Recreation Department to address infrastructure issues and also applied successfully to the Trillium Foundation for funds to support park improvements. Thorncliffe Neighborhood Office provided meeting and office space.  Local residents volunteered their support.  Foodshare provided information and connections, and a community group at Toronto’s Dufferin Grove Park provided inspiration.

Today, the park’s infrastructure is dramatically improved and its village-square potential is a reality. Kids swing from upgraded playground equipment, footpaths are paved, and the splashpad and water fountain are good to go.

On a warm summer’s Friday night, residents can sample Samosas, Biryani, Shawarma and other world foods, and purchase clothing and jewellery from more than a dozen mostly-female vendors.

“The Friday night Bazaar is a way for moms to operate a home business – these are women who may not speak English fluently or have the immediate skills for employment,” says Amy.

A temporary bake oven has been stoked for community bread-making, and a permanent Tandoor-style oven is in now the works.

And the new family garden? It is set to bloom starting this year. On a sunny morning in March, Amy points to areas of the rectangular fenced space that will provide:

— children’s garden programs

— a raised planter for seniors and/or people with mobility issues

— several family gardens

— and a garden shed, tools and composting centre.

“We wanted a community garden with a public feeling where people can share knowledge, and generations can come together,” she says. Toronto’s Parks department is getting ready to turn the sod and install a water system.

Amy and her husband Dave had previously grown their own tomatoes, lettuce, rhubarb, mint, Zinnias, Rudbekias and more as members of the original neighborhood garden —

Thorncliffe Park Garden Club — on hydro land just north of Overlead Boulevard. There, 100 allotment gardens offer fresh air and fresh produce to residents and their families.

“It was fun learning from our gardening neighbours. We knew there were long waiting lists for the existing gardens and also many people who wanted to try out gardening without necessarily having the full time responsibility for managing their own plot,” says Amy. The family-garden concept in R.V. Burgess Park was born, and promises a great fit with the park’s village-square vibe.

So how did a woman from Toronto’s established Yonge and Lawrence neighborhood end up as part of a community action group in Thorncliffe Park’s arrival city?

“Dave was in university and doing some soul-searching about his career,” Amy recalls. “To clear his mind one day he took a long walk up the Don Valley and ended up in Thorncliffe Park. He had never been there before. The school bell rang and a thousand kids ran outside to play in the school yard.”

The diversity and energy of the neighborhood made Dave think this would be a great place to raise kids, and Amy agreed. They rented a Thorncliffe apartment and started a family. Dave teaches high school while Amy devotes her time to their three young children and her community volunteer work.

And now, budding with the efforts and imagination of the Thorncliffe Park Women’s Committee, a family garden is set to bloom in the village square.

More information on the committee: http://tpwomenscomm.ca/wiki/wiki.php