Subscribe to The New Perennialist

×

Results for Natives

The Field Trip: A Perennial Summer Adventure

A friend once told me over a beer and frog legs in Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Travel is not about the places – it’s about the people you meet.

So true.

Now home after several whirlwind weeks on the road, I’m taking a breather to retrace my steps.

It all started with a visit to Baltimore, Maryland in late July for my first annual Perennial Plant Association (PPA) Symposium.

Next, my partner Troy and I buckled up for a 10-day road trip to Québec driving out along the silver-laced shores of the St. Lawrence Seaway to visit a pair of much revered gardens: Les Jardins de Métis and Les Quatre Vents.

Continue reading

Planting the Future: Our New Home Ground

I’m delighted to break something of a silence.

Strange wondrous things have been in the works over the past few month. After much commotion, I’m elated to announce a quantum shift not just in my gardening life – but in my naked earthbound reality.

And it means moving up in the world. Particularly in terms of altitude.

After two years of searching for a place of our own here in Ontario, my partner Troy and I found a spectacular piece of land with an old cabin set high atop a ridge in the rolling glacial wilderness of Mono.

Continue reading

Garden Design Goes Native

A new movement of native planting advocates is showing us how we can help sustain the matrix of biodiversity upon which all life depends – including our own.

To delve deeper, I spoke with Toronto ecological designer and former wild plant nursery owner Charles Kinsley to learn how urban gardeners can create and sustain a native garden.

Continue reading

Home Ground: The Uncottage Garden

I’m raising the curtain on something of a secret world.

It’s where for the past decade and more, I’ve immersed myself from early spring until late fall in the making of a different kind of garden. Mine is a naturalistic garden – designed to emulate something of the spirit and feeling of nature itself. And in many ways, the plantings look as if they have simply materialized over time.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Continue reading