My Gardens - My Front Backyard Gardens

I think my ribbon grass is taking over the pond, I'm going to have to divide it already, I just planted two 6" pots that I bought at the Leamington Horticultural Society's spring plant sale last year. They seem to thrive in the arid conditions, maybe I'll plant the divisions in the back corner of the yard.

This spiderwort is getting overgrown as well. I have chives, 3 strawberries, leaf lettuce and a strawberry spinach growing in the wire basket that my husband rescued when the town was cleaning up in the fall.

My gooseneck loostrife was growing into my clematis so I had to dig up the offshoots near the roots of the vine. I repotted them into two pots. This was another find at the plant sale.

The cosmos self-seeded so I just thinned the seedlings out where they were. The gooseberry bush, behind them, was a seedling about 8" tall when I bought it last spring at the plant sale. I'm hoping that it will be productive this year. My neighbour gave me some raspberry canes, front left that are starting to take off. She was told they were an everbearing variety and should produce fruit this year. We'll see.

I had to prune my trumpet vines back to the fence. They are invasive, and I'm constantly finding new shoots coming up in the garden and lawn. My sweet pea vines are getting too heavy for the netting that they are growing on.

My water lilies are doing great this year, the first week of blooming there were 11 blooms out at once!

The dogs knocked the flagstones from the edge of the pond. The feverfew self-seeded also, and there are tons of them now. They are good medicinal herbs if you are a migraine sufferer. The tea, made from five or six fresh or dried leaves steeped, sweetened to taste, and sipped slowly relieves the migraine and accompanying nausea. A daily tea is said to be a preventative. The tea has a floral flavour, similar to chamomile tea.


I had to take a close-up to show this golden sedum, bought at the plant sale, it is a ground-hugging plant. Next time I'll post pictures of my back backyard, the dog's playground.

Gardens - Water Gardens

I have been familiar with water gardens from childhood, my mother was ahead of her time, when, in the 60's she decided to put a small pond in her garden, with water lilies, fish and a fountain.

At that time the resources for building a home water garden weren't readily available so she had to improvise. Mom used a rigid vinyl kiddie pool with a fountain pump in it. It'a a lot different now, today, you can buy pre-formed pond kits in many sizes and shapes, or do-it-yourself kits with pond liners at your local department store or hardware store. There are even stores that specialize in water features that will help you decide what you need and how much if you want to do it from scratch.

The first water garden I made in 1994, I started from sratch, I used the pond liner that's sold by the metre on a roll. I found that it is the best way, with a large pond. A pre-cut 12' square liner sold in a kit would be enough to make a 6 foot pond that is 2' deep. If you want to make a shelf you have to add the depth of the shelf onto the measurements. It is advisable, in colder climates, to make the pond a depth of at least 3' so it doesn't freeze solid. So, where I live, a 12' square liner would make a pond 4 ' x 3' deep and I wanted a larger pond.

The second water garden I made years later, and I had different circumstances and considerations. I wanted a shallow pond, because I had grandchildren at this time, so I started with a kit. It was large enough for my purposes.


I decided to go with an idea I saw on a gardening show, I can't remember which one, where they used old sinks to make a waterfall. the sinks were placed in tiers with liner betweeen the sinks with pebbles on the liner and rocks around the edges leading into a pond. I liked the idea, but my space was limited and the ground was too level, so I decided to raise the sinks, so I made a waterfall with an old cast-iron bathroom sink on a concrete pedestle, overflowing into a copper kettle, over some rocks and into a kitchen sink and then into a single laundry tub and into the pond.


A few years later, the grandchildren were getting bigger, so we decided to expand the pond.


We wanted the original pond to connect to the new pond, which is 3 1/2' deep, so we made a stream to connect them, and bonded the two liner pieces together where they overlapped. Now we needed a bridge to go over the stream, it had to be wide enough for the lawn mower and garden tiller to be moved easily, and sturdy enough to be safe for the grandchildren to run across and jump on.


I also had to remove my clematis from the arbor that we used for our wedding, and start it growing on the fence that was being built there. It was a slow process, I did have an advantage in that the arbor was constructed in small lengths, held with screws, so I just dis-assembled the arbor, sliding the pieces out of the plants. I then wrapped the vines around the fence-posts and up around the rails, and started training them. They have come through the re-placement with flying colours.