On the Tropaeolum Trail.

When I was small we would go for walks with our mother in the neighborhood and stop and look at the gardens, some were interesting others where more playful and some just a plain messy. You could tell the ones who liked kids by the plants they often chose, fun ones like squashes, scarlet runner beans, and [...]

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Climbing and Vining with the Jackman Family.

I do not know when I first met this plant as I feel like I have known it all my life. Where I grew up it is on the coldest edge of its temperature tolerance. I know I have seen it many places here in it’s many forms and colors. I think i like the very first [...]

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Hot Pinks for the Hottest Week of the Year.

We often came down at this time of the year to visit our grandparents near White Rock. We went to the beach for days, played on the old farm equipment and eating cherries which we picked from the fruit trees. My grandmother loved her garden and especially the flowers she received from friends, I remember her telling [...]

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Dear ‘Felicite Perpetue’.

I am always looking for great plants to write about and often stumble upon new finds in the most unexpected places. last year while looking for different color forms of Lilacs I came across a plant which was growing through a clump of them which would bloom soon, I decided to come back later and [...]

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Naked is Always Exciting in the Plant World.

Living in the tropical zone of Canada, I can grow all kinds of plants which can not survive anywhere else in the country. We still are not happy though and continue to push the boundaries and try things which will barely survive or outright die in a cold winter.  Two members of the exotic (at least to [...]

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The ‘ Black Sheep’ of the Berry Family!

Living here in the Northwest I am always happy to find free sources of food. What I mean is I have learned about and have sampled many native plants which grow here. Some are the same ones I knew from growing up in the interior and others are strictly coastal natives. Other plants have been [...]

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The Dawn of a New Rose.

My mother’s parents lived on a farm in Surrey for most of my life.  As a child we came to visit every summer and went to the beach, the big city and if we were lucky eat fresh cherries off the tree.  Later I had a job near were my grandmother lived and would visit [...]

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Delicate Yet, So Dangerous.

At this time of year we are often overwhelmed by what is going on in the garden. Things are bursting with color, while others are unfurling delicately. All of a sudden the fence which we drove past for the last year is covered with blooms again, what can it be the climbs 30ft into that [...]

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The Tangled Web We Weave.

When I moved down to Vancouver to go to Horticulture school I had only ever seen one type of Clematis which grew in the Prince George area. It is the  rare Western Blue Clematis (Clematis occidentalis) which is not at all vigorous or showy having small blue bells which are lost in the dense forest [...]

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