The gardener
I garden so that I can live in there.
Inevitably, it has become an endless journey in exploring the fascinating world of ornamental plant culture, or a never ending experiment in collaboration with mother nature. After many years of gardening, I continuously find myself struggling to know and understand plants, to accommodate mother nature, and to learn from other gardeners.
Although we tend to ‘collect’ plants, we are more indulging ourselves in acquiring plants with ornamental characteristics (attractive to us) rather than simply acquiring plants because they are rare or new.
The garden
This is a casual country garden. I do not seek wowing flower displays in my compositions, and have no desire to follow trendy gardening ‘movements’. Therefore, my ‘compositions’ are nothing more than just doodles, and are inevitably unassuming and personal.
As a typical Zone 5 garden, I am fortunate enough to be able to grow oriental maples, some highly ornamental conifers, and even some flowering trees, but not nearly as fortunate as a Zone 6-8 garden, on the range of ornamental plants that can be reliably grown. In fact, because of the borderline nature of Zone 5 for a wide spectrum of highly ornamental plants, and the incredible temptation to grow them, I suspect gardening in Zone 5 is probably more challenging (or frustrating) than other Zones.
(We started our garden in the early 80’s, and named it Garden Canadensis. My daughter bought me the domain name gardencanadensis.ca as a Christmas present in 2005 when internet became available for residential use.)
Garden Blog
My (occasional) rant about our garden (my obsession)….