Gardening: an art learned from Grandma

I've always been fascinated by gardens. Growing up in Copper Cliff, we had the ugliest yard on the street. With three shirtless kids tramping around on it, our yard was more packed dirt than grass. Flowers were an extravagance my parents couldn't afford. My dad worked hard in the mines, but my mom stayed at home, taking leave from a career in teaching.

But my grandmother gardened with gusto. She had vegetables that helped see my family through the '78 Inco strike. She had a begonias and geraniums in aged terracotta that filled her McNaughton Street terrace. She had wildflowers and sunflowers that belied an austere Scottish heritage.

Things changed when we moved a few blocks away and mom returned to teaching full time. I was 12. The first thing she did was cut down the 100-year-old pines that I wove around at high speeds and that, she said, were sucking the life out of the grass. Her reason: she never had grass; she wanted a beautiful yard.

A total faux-pas by today's green standards, yet I completely got her motivation. She and my grandmother worked hard and quickly built, arguably, the best looking gardens in Copper Cliff. It was lush and colourful and well-thought out. There were paths and meandering vines, flowering trees and edible fruits. Folks used to walk through the yard in awe. And she welcomed them and sometimes offered a narrated tour.

So I come by my love of growing honestly.

I'm what you might call a rebel gardener. I follow the rules, when I need to, but I also throw caution to the wind and do what I think needs to be done to suit the space and my sense of aesthetic.

Move a hosta mid-July? Do it. Buy a tomato plant from the greenhouse and pretend it was from seed? Done. Who will ever know?

Over the summer, I'll be creating new gardens at home, building rock walls, planting trees, looking for native plants, working on better gardens than mine, dreaming about vegetables, getting rid of pests and digging for worms.

And you can follow along all summer in Northern Life. Send me your thoughts at [email protected] or visit my blog at boultonanne.typepad.com/greenboots.