Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown was baptised three hundred years ago this August. As a young man working in large gardens he discarded the idea of arranging beds formally - as exemplified in Versailles - and favoured the integration of garden and countryside, regressing from more controlled gardens near the grand houses, to more rural character further away.

Moisture and warm temperatures allow our early plants to emerge (5o C is the typical start for growth for many plants), but it is the soil temperature at root level that is critical for spring revival. With plants that do not have chive-like leaves, (monocots) differentiating the good guys from the bad guys can be difficult at this stage as the first leaves on many broad leaved plants (dicots) are different from the later leaves. It is worthwhile to protect one, and remove the other.

Based on climate data collected from 1981 to 2010, most of Calgary now lies in the warmer plant hardiness zone 4a. This means we can be more adventurous in our plant selection: at first this sounds like heaven - but not quite. Tree budburst dates are earlier, but the dates of late frosts have not changed so much, so fruit tree blossom will suffer more from late frosts. There are two different methods to identify what zone we garden in. The simplest is that published by the U.S.