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As the old year limped to a close, many looked ahead to 2009 with either trepidation or hope.

The scary global economy is something to give everyone pause, especially if you’ve lost 35 per cent or more of the value of your investments, as so many people have. However, we’ve all taken the hit in one way or another, so I guess it’s a level playing field of sorts.

You see, I definitely belong to the hopeful group; an incorrigible Pollyanna, the original cup-is-half-full kind of gal. And I’m looking forward to this year, which I know for me will be filled with new adventures. On January 22, I’m leaving my job as editor-in-chief of the magazine and striding forth into the great unknown.

But meanwhile, there’s the post-Christmas stuff to face. I need to start thinking about taking down the tree and putting away the colourful ornaments for another year. And after the reds and bright lights of the holidays, this is a time when I crave not more colour, but white. Perhaps it’s a symbol of purity for the as-yet blemish-free new year. I especially love to buy white amaryllises—I’m not quite ready for fragrant spring blooms, but the stately, scentless white blossoms of amaryllis feel just right—almost like trumpets to herald in the new year. There’s a little flower market not far from me that carries them for just $6.99; a real bargain, for just one plant brings pleasure for weeks.

I used to save my amaryllis bulbs and try to get them to reflower, but I had limited success with this (despite my cosseting, too many of them came up blind). So now, most of the time I enjoy them, then toss them into the compost. Happy New Year.

Last week, I wrote about a cheap and cheerful way to fill up containers for winter. In case you had trouble visualizing what these branches look like decorated for the holidays, here’s your answer. We had a fresh snowfall this morning here in Toronto and I went outside to do some shovelling before heading off for work. I took this photo at first light (I’m an early riser).

I spent maybe 15 minutes, tops, festooning the red dogwood branches with an old string of white lights (must replace these with LED lights, which I’ll buy in the post-holiday sales), some unbreakable ornaments and a few garlands of unbreakable red beads. Maybe it’s not the most elegant container in town, but I like it.

If you’re planning to shop for a fresh-cut Christmas tree, you can prolong the life of its needles by spraying the tree with an anti-dessicant spray (several brands are available at nurseries and garden centres) before bringing it indoors. Ditto for your wreaths and swags. What this spray does is help seal the needles to retard evaporation of moisture.

I no longer get a big, fresh-cut tree—partly because the most misshapen, woebegone, Charlie Brown tree on the lot was the one I’d invariably choose to buy. One year, the poor thing was so crooked and bare on one side, I literally had to wedge its stand under the baseboard to keep it from toppling over. It looked as though it was bowing to everyone who came into the room.

These days, my tree is a sculptural affair fashioned from brown twigs. Each year I haul it up from the furnace room, put it on a table and decorate it. But I do buy fresh-cut boughs and put them in a big pitcher for their lovely smell.

We’re due for more snow tomorrow. Maybe it’ll be a rare white Christmas after all.

Creating a winter container design can be a time-consuming and expensive undertaking. If you go the full monty with both broadleafed and evergreen boughs, magnolia leaves, eucalyptus, cones and assorted bits, bobs, bows and berries, you can very easily drop three figures on just a couple of pots. And if you have lots of pots, you might as well take out a mortgage.

So recently, after years of trying to outdo myself with increasingly elaborate container displays, I came up with an idea that’s simple, inexpensive and quick.

I now buy plenty of the prettiest, most colourful branches I can find (such as red, orange or yellowtwig dogwood, or perhaps really fresh, yellow-green curly willow). Then I push loads of these—but just one type per pot—into the soil of each container until a full and pleasing shape is created (do not skimp on the branches; cram them in). Next, for a more finished look, I top the soil with moss (a greengrocer near me sells huge boxes of the stuff for $15–plenty to do all my containers). If moss is unavailable, you could substitute leaves, straw, tiny pine cones or whatever mulch-like material comes to hand. The whole lot is then anchored with river stones, which I buy at Ikea for about $2 for a generously sized mesh bag (I figure on one bag per large pot).

And that’s it. Estimated cost per container? Well under $20 (and if you have shrub trimmings you can use, almost nothing).

During the holidays, I dress up the branches with a string of plain white lights and colour-coordinated ornaments. This year, to go with my red dogwood, I bought a large box of red ornaments from Ikea for around $5. They look like glass but are some sort of unbreakable stuff. These will be hung with good old gardener’s twine, which is both sturdy and attractive.

I’ve had a lot of compliments on these pots which, I’ve been told, look really festive and pretty. Best of all, after the holidays, removing the lights and ornaments is a snap. The pots keep their clean good looks all winter long and don’t look too Christmassy after the fact, either.

(Tip: if you haven’t put together your winter container yet and the soil in your pot has frozen, don’t do what my neighbour did and try to soften it up with a hair dryer. Best to lug it inside overnight, where it will defrost and be easy to work with the next day. Put it on a mat or some newspapers so it doesn’t make a mess.)

My kitchen has a little breakfast room with a skylight and a big sliding door overlooking the garden. Apart from that there’s just one window, with a panoramic view of my neighbour’s brick wall and into their kitchen window.

Rather than create privacy with curtains or shutters, I fill the deep sill with a motley assortment of plants. This has the same effect and gives both of us something nice and green to look at year-round.

My kitchen window faces north, so the light isn’t terrific for sun-lovers, but less fussy plants survive just fine. So what grows there at the moment? In the black, wrought-iron pedestal pot is a ‘River Nile’ begonia—a showy beauty whose leaves have maroon-coloured edges. Next to it on the right is a slipper orchid that has quadrupuled in size and has bloomed twice for me—it really needs to be transplanted, but I’m not that confident with orchids so I’ve been putting it off. And to the right of that is a crown of thorns (Euphorbia milii), which has grown quite tall and rangy because it would really, really appreciate more light, thank you. Even so, it does manage to push out a few red blooms from time to time, so good for it.

At the back left is a coffee plant that was sent to me some 18 months ago. This hasn’t grown too much, but at least it hasn’t died. (Still, I don’t think I’ll be grinding homegrown beans anytime soon.) Next to it and partially hidden from view is a floppy aloe vera, always a must in my kitchen because I often singe my arm or burn a finger as I’m pulling stuff out of the oven. I simply break off a bit of the plant and rub its sap on the ow-ow, which immediately soothes it.

Alongside these and thankfully hidden from view is a truly scraggly looking bit of lucky bamboo rooting in water. This was also sent to me and though I really should, I’m just too darned superstitious to put it in the compost. Last but not least, in the front left is a sulky African violet I’m nursing along. My house really doesn’t have great light for African violets, but I’m ever hopeful and keep buying them anyway.

What’s growing on your windowsill?

The first snowfall caught some Torontonians by surprise. The garden next door is still littered with colourful plastic toys, now dusted with snow, while a forlorn-looking garden umbrella sits at half-mast in its holder.

“Geez, I didn’t think it would snow so soon,” my neighbour ruefully admitted, as the two of us shovelled our respective walks this morning. The weather is supposed to be warming up next week, so likely she’ll still have time to gather up everything before serious winter bites.

I took this photograph from my back deck, which gives you some idea of what I look at from my breakfast room. Not bad, eh? When I was a young gardener, I grew loads of flowers and little else. As a consequence, in winter my backyard looked flat, bald and blah. A depressing sight for a housebound young mother with two babies, which I was back then.

But the longer you garden, the more you learn.

Now, there’s plenty to gaze at year-round. There are loads of shrubs and small trees for visiting birds to perch on, and quite a few evergreens of various kinds, which tend to take a back seat in summer but come to the fore when the snow flies.

I really like broadleafed evergreens, too, and in this climate (Zone 6) they look good throughout winter. Sarcoxie euonymus (the plain green kind–my favourite) cloaks my fences. This plant takes a while to get established, but once it starts climbing it’s great. (In summer, vines such as clematis clamber through it.) And the neighbour whose house is joined to mine has a massive Oregon grape (Mahonia spp.) that sits on our property line and lends its imposing leafy presence all year.

Some of my deciduous plants keep their foliage for a long time, too, such as the columnar beech halfway down the garden and my bayberry (Myrica pensylvanica), which has taken on an impressive size.

There’s lots to love about the winter landscape.

The white stuff aside (the first snowfall of winter is always a joy), it’s been a rather unsettling week. Last Friday, I found out our major competitor, Gardening Life, is folding. Contrary to what you might think, I am saddened by this, and especially for Marjorie Harris, whose baby the magazine has been since Day One. Ironically, Marjorie and Liz Primeau, our magazine’s founding editor, are coming to my house for lunch on Monday. We try to do this once a year, and the date was decided long before this bad news broke. This time, there’ll be champagne for sure. I think we’ll drink to resilience.

Incidentally, Liz has just written her memoir. It’s called My Natural History: The Evolution of a Gardener and is published by Greystone Books. I’ve reviewed it in our winter issue, and it’s a cracking good read. And some of you may not know that as well as being a journalist and author, Marjorie is also a garden consultant. I reckon she’d be a fun person to have advise you on your patch. If you’d like to know more about the services she offers, you can check out  www.marjorieharris.com/Flyer/index.php.

There’s a park around the corner from where I live, and in it grow a number of big, old oak trees. Although there was a cold drizzle this morning when I took this photo, I did notice most of their leaves are finally down. On the next dry day, I plan to head over there to rake some up into big, clear plastic bags to take home.

People think I’m bonkers when they see me doing this, but I don’t care. And yes, dogs frolic freely there, so I’ll wear my sturdy old rubber gloves just in case I come across any…well, you know.

Some of these leaves will be flung atop the garden beds right now to keep plants cozy over winter. (I’ve often wondered why people scrape every last leaf off their beds. Take a cue from nature—you don’t see any leaf-blower-wielding gnomes in the forest, do you? And besides, would you want to sleep naked and uncovered on a cold winter’s night? Of course not, and neither do your plants.) Next spring, those that haven’t decomposed will be raked up and put into a couple of old plastic garbage cans, where they’ll continue to break down into leaf mould. I’m never too fastidious about their removal, for even if I do nothing, by early summer the earthworms will have pulled most of them down into the soil.

A few bags of leaves will be stashed behind the shed at the rear of the garden, which is hidden behind a partial fence in the no-go zone I call the “back 40.” Here you will also find my composters, some old pots, bits and bobs, this and that and a big pile of discarded flowering plants and annuals–overflow that won’t fit into the composters). It’s a bit like having a very useful, giant junk drawer in my garden. Next spring and summer, a portion of the bagged oak leaves will be trotted out and used as brown matter in my composters and as mulch where needed.

I like most leaves, but I especially prize oak because unlike many other types, such as Norway maple, they don’t get all soggy and matted down when wet. They stay crisp and separate. Some gardeners believe oak leaves lower the pH of the soil, but my feeling is their effect is minimal. Still, the evergreens in my garden do seem to appreciate these leaves piled around their roots, so who am I to argue?

Here in Toronto, we’ve been having the most fantastic week of beautiful weather. Blue sky days with wonderful golden light, and foliage colours so radiant and vivid they almost look electric. I took this photo from the deck off my bedroom, which is on the third floor of my house. The neighbour’s silver maple was looking at its autumn best, untouched as yet by the inevitable and cruel November winds that will surely come soon to shake its branches and loosen the leaves. (I had to laugh listening to Tom Allen on CBC Radio Two Morning, who remarked on how it was so Canadian to rejoice in great weather but somehow not to trust it, needing to mutter darkly about paying the price for it later, etc. So true.)

Anyway, I was out there emptying the last of the annuals out of their pots before it got too cold to do it comfortably (the deck faces west and gets great afternoon light, but also the prevailing wind, so it can get pretty darn nippy out there if you leave these jobs too late). Once emptied, the pots were stacked in a corner where I can’t see them through the sliding door, while the potted junipers and cedars were grouped where I can. I lightly bound up the junipers with garden twine to keep their branches from being pulled down by snow, watered the evergreens within an inch of their lives and mulched. If the weather stays warm, I’ll keep giving them big drinks until the cold sets in.

Out in the garden, I planted some pure white bulbs sent to me by my friend Sally Ferguson of the Netherlands Flower Bulb Information Center. In went crocuses, species tulips, hyacinthoides, alliums and more, and the thought of them emerging next spring, joining the plethora of other bulbs already out there, will keep me smiling through another long, grey Toronto winter.

In the front, the autumn pots were definitely looking past their sell-by date, so I yanked out the spent plants and popped fresh dogwood branches in one and curly willow branches in another, then topped things off with moss and stones. Presto! Talk about a five-minute facelift. If only there was something that worked this quickly and easily on humans.

As promised, in this post I’ll touch on a few tips for flower arranging and container design given by experts in Canadian Gardening’s Green Room at the recent Style at Home show. 

Elene Nouri and Jennifer Christiani, custom designers at Sheridan Nurseries’ Scarborough store, had some excellent advice on creating winter container arrangements. They securely tape a block of floral foam (such as Oasis) to the top of the soil in a container, which allows them to create a more layered, three-dimensional and fuller arrangement, as they can then insert greens and branches sideways into the foam as well as straight down into the soil. They advise soaking the floral foam in water to which they add a little liquid Sta-Fresh, a preservative, for half an hour before attaching it to the container, as this makes it less brittle and crumbly and easier to work with. After greens are arranged, they spritz their foliage with Sta-Fresh spray to further prevent them from growing yellow and bedraggled-looking. Once temperatures drop, the floral foam will freeze and hold branches securely in place.

Kate Seaver of Kate’s Garden had some great advice for keeping cut roses fresh. When you get your roses home, cut their stems at an angle and put them into lukewarm water with a bit of flower food. An angled (not straight across) cut allows the free circulation of water and nutrients up the stem. Be sure to strip off any foliage that would sit below the water line, as it will start to decay (this holds true for any cut flower). Change the water in the vase every two days, add a bit of flower food and cut the stems a bit each time. Pick off outer rose petals if they look spent. 

If your roses’ flower heads suddenly droop, it doesn’t mean they’re dead, it likely means there’s an air bubble in the stem. To cure this, recut stems, lie the roses flat in a sink and add lukewarm water until flowers are covered (if your sink is too small, use the bathtub). Leave roses immersed in water for about 20 minutes, and they should perk right up again.

Canadian Gardening’s Green Room at last weekend’s Style at Home Show was a busy place. The glorious plants in all their autumn glory, lent to us courtesy of Sheridan Nurseries, drew many admirers. And as the organizer of much of the programming and master (mistress?) of ceremonies on Saturday and Sunday, I had the opportunity to listen to some super-knowledgeable speakers. Here are some snippets of good advice they offered. Look for my next post for info on flower arranging and creating winter container displays.

Dugald Cameron (of gardenimport.com) informed us that fall is the best time to plant (or divide) your peonies. The reason? This is the only time of year they show their “eyes”—those little white bud-like affairs seen just below the soil surface when you dig them up. Any divisions must have at least one eye, though several are preferable (Dugald often goes for four). When you plant your peony, make sure its eyes are level and positioned 1 1/2 to 2 inches below the soil. It’s also not too late to plant many spring bulbs. (Of course, this depends on where you garden—here in the Toronto area [mostly Zone 5 and 6] many hard-core, forgetful or procrastinating gardeners don’t even think about planting their tulips or lilies until November.)

Charlie Dobbin demonstrated a lasagna-type layered planting of spring bulbs in a large frostproof container, which then gets buried underground (or stored in a dark root cellar if you happen to have one). Here, you’re forcing the bulbs to come into bloom earlier than they would when planted in the ground, so that in very early spring, you can excavate the pot outdoors, put it in a prominent place in your patio or garden and enjoy waves of spring blooms for six weeks or more (those lucky folks with root cellars need only move their pot up to a bright spot indoors for a grand show). Charlie says, “make sure the container has drainage holes, and use a commercial potting mix. Start with about four inches of soil, then place the largest bulbs at the bottom of the pot and ignore the advice on spacing. Just jam them in, cover with about 4 inches of soil then add another layer of bulbs in the same way until you get near the top, and top it all with four inches of soil. Water, and “plant” into the ground—or store in a dark root cellar.”

Denis Flanagan talked about putting your garden to bed for the winter, and the news is good if you’re a bit lazy. “Basically, don’t do too much,” he advises. Don’t clean up—leave your perennials standing so their seedheads provide food for birds and a place to catch the snow [good advice, too, if you're a novice gardener, as it'll prevent you from inadvertently digging up plants next spring before they show signs of life]. And don’t rake the leaves off your beds, instead, pile more on. Both Dugald and Denis remarked on how handy it was their neighbours put out big bags of leaves for collection by the city—they could go around and help themselves. Water in evergreens well, and use an anti-dessicant spray, such as Wiltproof, on prized broadleafed evergreens—such as euonymus, mahonia and holly—spraying the underside of their leaves only. This is where their pores are, and the spray helps lock in moisture to protect leaves against drying out.

The last few weekends have been spent in good company with dear friends, though I must confess they’ve included rather a lot of festive meals and nice red wine (thank heavens for Lycra). Of course, all this feasting was compounded over Thanksgiving, which here in Toronto was graced by spectacular Indian summer weather and last night, an intensely bright full moon that should have kept me awake, but didn’t.

Yesterday as I waddled around my garden (MUST get back to the gym…soon…), I felt a glow of happiness and well-being and yes, gratitude, which was further enhanced by the warm, sunny day and the beautiful sight of some favourite plants that have just started to don their colourful autumn mantles. Looking good right now are my ‘Lady in Red’ ferns, whose fronds have turned a pale gold that contrasts with their stunning red stems. Some of my barrenwort has also taken on burgundy hues, as has the serviceberry. The neighbours to the north of me planted birches along our property line, and these went buttery yellow almost overnight, to echo the leaves of my climbing hydrangea and certain hostas. The blooms of various paniculata type hydrangeas are a stunning cerise right now, reminding me to harvest some for display indoors, and although the Chinese flowering dogwood hasn’t turned dark red yet, it’s thinking about it, as are the oakleaf hydrangeas. I also have a tender euphorbia known as Caribbean copper plant (Euphorbia cotinifolia ‘Atropurpurea’), whose foliage looks for all the world like purple smokebush (hence its Latin name), growing in a planter. Over the summer, it’s reached an impressive size and the leaves have just turned the most vivid shades imaginable of bronze, orange and red. Wow! Gorgeous, but how will I get it in the house? Speaking of which, with a view to the cooler forecast later in the week, I’ve already brought in the New Zealand flax and will soon bring in the agapanthus. My pots of herbs are still going strong, though, and being a glutton, I’m thankful.

The photo I’ve included this week isn’t from my garden; it’s of an arrangement sent to me a few weeks ago by my friend Erin and created by the floral wizards at Teatro Verde. I keep changing the water and it’s still going strong. The main components are sedum heads, celosia and asters, and if you omit the orchids you could have a bash at recreating it yourself, either from what you have in your garden and planters, or what you can find at the local florist shop or greengrocer. First, pebbles were placed at the bottom of the low bowl, which was then crisscrossed across the top with thin pieces of cellotape to anchor the plants (I checked). Then the arrangement was built up with the flowers mentioned and a few greens.

Finally, I’m off tomorrow morning to the Direct Energy Centre at Exhibition Place, to help designer and landscape architect Shawn Gallaugher start setting up The Green Room, which is Canadian Gardening’s large display area at this weekend’s Style at Home Show, which starts Friday, October 17 and continues through Sunday, October 19. Shawn and I spent last Thursday morning at the Norval farm of Sheridan Nurseries, choosing plant material for the display (the generous folks at Sheridan have lent it to us for the show) and I can promise you it is SPECTACULAR. We have terrific programming scheduled for each day, too, with gardening celebrities including Lorraine Johnson, Gayla Trail, Liz Primeau, Charlie Dobbin and Denis Flanagan, to name just a few, giving talks and doing how-to demos. We’ll also have Master Gardeners on hand to answer all your gardening questions, book signings, and daily Make and Take workshops with Kate Seaver of Kate’s Garden. (To see the full schedule of events, go to styleathomeshow.com and click on schedules). I hope you’ll come down and say hello.