I love looking at my garden. I’ve gotten to the stage where I actually sit in the garden and appreciate it. Feels like I’ve spent decades like a whirling dervish out there, not stopping long enough to memorize what it was like. 

I don’t remember what it was like ten years ago any more. I had the checkerboard, yes. Things weren’t as tall of course and there were may more perennials.  Now I stand in the middle of my garden and can feel layer upon complex layer of plants all around me.  Most of it created by using foliage instead of blooms. 

At the end of the week, we pulled out a huge old boxwood and a viburnum seedling which had gotten out of hand. Huge task which Kathy and her nephew Henry managed to accomplish in between whacking great tropical downpours.  Now for some creative staring to figure out what’s next.

 If you go to My Garden (up there at the top), you’ll see Tom Vogel’s brilliant and latest installment in photographing the garden with a new kind of perspective. You can click on the flower in the middle and it goes from winter to spring to summer and you can see all around the garden.

 I do it on a regular basis because it completely fascinates me. I sort of like technology.

Speaking of which:  the new e-letter will go out on Wednesday.  If  you haven’t signed up and want it, do let me know. Tara will come in and actually do this because my eyes just glaze over at sending out hundreds of these things.  When I try it doesn’t work.  Just like getting photographs on to the web site. So far I’ve been a complete dunce at this. But I live hopefully.

So look at My Garden, sign up for the e-letter and hope that it doesn’t rain again today.

After yet another mountain of deadlines completed, I realize I’m a serial worker. I can’t blog and do all this other stuff at the same time. But now it’s getting back into the garden to be more than just an observer. The other day I was musing about this at the dining room table and watching a couple of teenage robins having a merry old time sunbathing, showering and fooling around on the sculpture fountain.

I don’t think Reinhard Rietzenstein who created this marvelous work of art had any idea of what a multipurpose piece it is: The sounds masks much of the noise of the city; it’s a magnet for insects; and the bird population has been enormous.

Earlier this year I saw a Scarlet tanager. At least that’s what it looks like in my bird book (I know nothing about birds). And the usual suspects who live here all the time (cardinals, robins, blue jays) zoom in and out. But it’s the robins that seem to enjoy it most of all.

They sit on top of the bubbler and go crazy. Are they having some sort of sublime sensual experience? These two guys the other days were facing off each other, beak to beak, looking like they were taunting each other and having fun doing it.

I’m not sure if you’re supposed to be anthropomorphic with birds or not. But there is something gangly and very male about the two birds who make this their spa/playground.

Jostling for position, flapping back and forth, making a lot of wonderful racket.

I have new and even greater respect for wild life photographers. I’ve worked with some of the best including Tony Beck (look at his web site www.tonybeck.com  and you’ll see what I mean). The patience, the endurance waiting for that defining moment. I spent a good many hours and got a couple of rather crummy shots.

I’ve always been afraid of birds (sea gull attack as a child) but I’m getting more and more fascinated as I spend time sitting very still in the dining room with the huge screen down and windows wide open. Being still has never been easy for me, but I can do it when I’m watching plants and birds do what they are supposed to be doing. Getting this close to nature makes everything else worthwhile.

I was on Fresh Air this a.m. with the wonderful Karen Gordon who managed to smoosh dozens of questions sent in by listeners into really good questions. The two annuals I mentioned are: Plectranthus ‘Mona Lavender’ and Euphorbia ‘White Diamonds’. Both are superb if you can find them this time of the year. If not put them on your list for next year.

I’m back. I am a serial worker it seems. I’ve spent weeks trying to finish the new edition of a 1991 book ECOLOGICAL GARDENING. To the astonishment of my publisher Anne Collins of Random House, I got it in at exactly the hour I said I would (also a couple of days early as well). I was pretty astonished myself but everything else dropped to one side in the push to complete it.

There so much that’s happened and not all of it good over the years. Disappointing and terrifying is more like it. But the book was amazingly prescient about climate change and the need to shift our gardening techniques. Anyway, it will be out early in the new year.

I did manage to get out to client’s gardens with arbourist Derek Welsh. He also had to spend time in my garden. I stupidly placed a Cornus controversa ‘Variegata’ in absolutely the wrong place. So Derek is going to spend the rest of my life in this garden keeping it in a lollypop shape because it’s too big to move.

This is called do what I write, not what I actually do. What a dope. I didn’t read the plant tag properly, I ignored the research. I put something little in where I thought it would look perfect. It did too, until it started to grow into the monster it would end up being. So it’s being shaped into something it’s not.

I like the look of it now, however, as it peaks through a dense part of the garden like a delicious secret. In situ it is absolutely stunning. That Derek. He can make anything crappy look good again. This has been a summer of such growth that weeds spring up over night. Toronto has had the most rain it its 70+ year history of keeping track.

This place was looking shaggy and a little unkempt. A morning of Derek hovering his way through here changed all that: a large limb is now gone out of the witch hazel, massive chunks out of an ailing Viburnum ‘Shasta’, taking half of a Cornus mas ‘Variegata’ off, moving a Cotoneaster dielsianus var. ‘Major’ to a better aspect. It was flopping into my neighbour’s garden so he just turned it so it tumbles forward here—brilliant—I thought I was going to have to move it.

But what we found in a client’s garden was truly upsetting. A magnificent old magnolia was attacked (le mot juste ) by a famous Toronto company and I’ve never seen such a mess. Crossing branches were left and now a year and a half later dig into each other so badly a large limb has to be removed. The ends were tipped. The shape destroyed. As I say, Derek is a wizard. He will clean out these trees, find a lovely form and make them look good.

Be very careful when you hire someone. Get a certified arbourist. If you are having a big job done, make sure you look what they’ve done in someone else’s garden. And don’t waste their time. These guys cannot do anything with your city trees so don’t ask.

If they touch a city tree, both owner and arbourist will be fined heavily. You have to get your city councilLor to help if your town’s tree department won’t respond. An arbourist can do anything you need done (as well as move vines going into window areas and eaves) safely. But get someone with the eye of an artist. This stuff is expensive.

When I’m doing a garden, the first thing I recommend is a good cleaning out. It’s one of the best investments you can make—bar none. Then it’s possible to see what you’ve actually got to deal with. It clears the mind as well as the garden. And it does piss me off when people balk at the prices. This is dangerous work, and it lasts for years. The aesthetics should be incomparable.

I am now going off to spend rainy days playing UPWORDS and SCRABBLE with my grandchildren and will be back here on Sunday or Monday.

Wow what a magnificent Canada Day it is: warm,  sunny, not humid and the garden is looking magnificent.  I have a tour coming this afternoon:  it’s for a charity. They use my garden as a silent auction item and today I am expecting what sounds like a lovely couple who care about gardening. I always say:  “If you want wine and nibblies, bring them.” And it usually turns into a treat.

Even though there are still plants to be put in the garden, here goes with what’s blooming today. Haven’t seen much of the garden this week because  I’ve had a cold that has felled me completely.  I spent more time in bed than out hacking away.  Sort of feel better now. Sort of.

 Clematis ‘Betty Corning’ is covered with the pale blue turned-up bells in several spots.  I planted way too much but who cares. The sight and scent  are enchanting in any position. C. fargesioides isn’t far behind in the madly blooming slot but it’s not a well-behaved plant. Again, that’s fine in some places but it really needs whacking back in others and that has to be done this week.

The plant that’s astounding is an annual here:  Tibouchina urvilleana which has soft velvety silver-green leaves with brilliant blue flowers.  It is a showstopper in a container. The encyclopaedia says it will get to 10 feet tall in its native Brazil but methinks not so here.  It’s planted with almost black calla lilies, deep purple-black Asiatics and a couple of the black grasses, Ophiopogon planescens. 

 Euphorbia ‘White Diamond’ has had the best press I’ve seen for any plant since Sambucus ‘Black Lace’ hit the market a few years ago.  The euphorbia lives up to its billing as one of the best of all the new annuals:  starry pure white flowers that bloom all summer long. They seem to do just fine in the shade and look wonderful with my all-time favourite Plectranthus ‘Mona Lavender’ and one of the new ipomeas.  And S. ‘Black Lace’ continues to be a really good plant in almost any light.  

We have a street potluck tonight and it’s terrific competitive cooking, lovely wine from the local ecological group GrassRoots Albany and a chance to yak it up with the wonderful people who live on our street.  We are really really lucky.  

Of course one of the major reasons I didn’t get the return blues from Tuscany this month is that we’re looking forward to the French Tour in September. This is another fantasy trip Linda Thorne and I thought up together.

We sat around in the middle of winter musing on all the gardens we’d love to see: little gardens around Paris, then the major ones such as Versailles, Giverny, Chaumont, Villandry and Chemons; plus the gardens I’ve been prowling around in the south of France for the past twenty years: Hanbury, Les Cedres (unbelievable) and William Waterfield’s Clos de Peyronnet just to name a few.

William is a wonderful gardener and he’s does it on a slope that would intimidate most people. He grows more alliums than anyone I know. It’s his fervent hope that he will have things in bloom every day of the year. And given this incredible microclimate he makes it.

It’s going to be as sensational as the Tuscan Tour in a slightly different way: fewer hills. And there will be even more wonderful gardens. Check out the itinerary on my web site (The Gardens of France) just to whet your appetite.

When we got back from Tuscany too many people said: “Why didn’t you tell me about it?” Well I’m telling you about France. And I want you to come on this trip. You’ll have all your senses satisfied. It’s a glorious time of year to travel through the Loire Valley (on the TGV no less) as things are being harvested.

We should be getting to everyone of these gardens just as they are hitting a new peak of perfection which is always fun. But these places are so amazing they’ll be great to wander around no matter what.

I want to take you to some of my favourite places to hang out in the south (Paris too but I know Nice and all around there really really well after 20 years of going there). Restos (not ones you’ll finding guide books), vendors (we will have some time to shop) and little out of the way places.  I adore France and it’s an experience of the country that will be personal as well as merely fabulous on its own.