The Scarboro Garden Scene

thegardener's picture

celebrating spring

    What a joy it is to see the blossom in our community in a spring like this – and take in their perfume as you walk around the neighbourhood. No matter how “good” our winter has been, spring blossom and fresh green leaves remind us how lucky we are. The apple, pear, and crab-apple trees and bushes come in such a variety of colours and form they provide a gallery of vivid displays even though many older trees suffered from broken branches in last year’s September storm.
    There are other shrubs that can provide edible fruit and we can grow and enjoy them too. Of course in the right restricted area we can grow raspberries but they are very successful to the point of being invasive: their suckers can re-appear several feet away from their parent bush, and do not care about property boundaries! You might try currents in a sunny area. Elderberry shrubs, some self-seeded, occur in our neighbourhood, and these can bear attractive edible fruit in the fall in red or purple-black forms … their leaves vary in form too, but one thing is common to all varieties, and that is their hollow wooden stems.
    On your walks I hope you saw the bright blue grape-hyacinths and purple-blue Prairie Crocus on the traffic island, with the Evan’s Sour Cherry tree coming into blossom. Going back to blue flowers, this spring seems to have produced masses of blue and pink Pulmonaria - to use its botanical name - I hesitate to use the common name lungwort as this has so many meanings depending on your location across Canada, but also fine displays of Brunnera and Forget-me-nots, periwinkle, and Scillas. The white varieties of Scilla siberica, Grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum) and Pulmonaria provide a nice contrast to the blues there.
    Must make time now to see what re-organization I should do before it get too hot, along with the rest of my spring-clean up: hope you got to yours last month!

Glynn Wright, May 21st, 2015