Liza Fuller - Grand Prize Winner in Home Hardware's Canadian Garden Contest

We had our Trillium Award Celebration evening this past week.  I get to do the presentation.  It consists of a picture of each front garden (viewable from the street), and then a commentary About a notable feature of their garden and of garden design.  They receive their Trillium 'stake' from our Mayor - Bob Bentley.  At the end we take a group photo - a panorama that I piece together of the whole group. One of our Trillium winners this year (and most years) is Liza Fuller, who lives at 472 Wolverton Rd in Grimsby.  This is on the escarpment and is a very large rural property with a central pond with gardens surrounding it.  It is very notable from the road - it has the Wow Factor that we look for in Curb Appeal. Liza has won the grand prize of the Home Hardware Canada's Backyard Garden Contest.  There were more than 500 gardens entered from across Canada. Yesterday Raymond Carriere, the Founding President of Communities in Bloom presented Liza with her first place award - $1,000 - at our Grimsby Home Hardware.   Liza thanked us for our Grimsby Garden Club website and Facebook coverage of her award. People stopped in all day yesterday to congratulate her and see the garden.  Here's the Communities in Bloom link to the contest HERE.  It doesn't show the awards yet.

A Note from Einstein

It was JazzFM that brought this story to my attention - a note written on a Tokyo hotel official paper in 1922 by Albert Einstein sold at an auction in Jerusalem, October 24, 2017 for $1.5 million. The headline of this interesting story:  Einstein's Note on Happiness Sells for... "While in Japan, Einstein stayed at Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel. During his stay, a hotel worker came to Einstein’s room to make a delivery. Einstein found himself without any money to give the man as a tip for his services. So, instead of money, the famous scientist handed the hotel worker a signed note with a sentence he wrote in German. It read: “A calm and humble life will bring more happiness than the pursuit of success and the constant restlessness that comes with it.” He gave him another note that read: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” He advised the bellboy to keep these notes as they would become more valuable than a tip.  We look at two elements in the garden today - a birch tree creatively displays bird houses in a Grimsby garden and bamboo leaves seen through the conservatory plexiglass window at the Royal Botanical Gardens.

Sheep in the Lawn and the Wild West

Today it is sheep in the lawn.  This was a display in one of the gardens on the Grimsby Garden Tour in July.  The second display was at another house on the tour - I had no idea that we had The Wild West here in Grimsby.  This is a tool shed!

The Last Leaves are Lasting

I am so impressed with the colours of the Japanese Maples this year.  My own mature tree is a Versicolour, and the leaves range from intense orange-red to yellow to green.

Here are a few shots from this week:

Another Gorgeous Grimsby Garden

A corner garden has advantages for someone like me who enjoys gardens and particularly likes a corner garden that displays more garden than a front garden alone can. Here's Zoi Ouzas' garden on Deer Park in Grimsby.  The variations of green in ground cover and grass give a sense of lushness here.  The red flowers draw the eye along the curving line and focus the attention on the pretty curved arbour over the garden gate.  A beautiful work of garden art.

It makes sense that Zoi is in real estate - with a house and garden of such note. Here's her real estate website: http://www.zoiouzas.com

Grimsby Gardens - Cole's Nursery

Hi everyone,

I am lucky to have an old-fashioned garden centre in my neighbourhood in Grimsby.  This means that it still has summer perennials, annuals, and trees and shrubs for sale.  They actually get new plants in so I can spruce up my planters.

This is in contrast to the other greenhouses - Seaway on Lakeshore has cleared the greenhouses out of summer stock and has started the Poinsettias.  Sunshine's is 3/4's empty with gift pot plants, herbs, etc in the front section.  Almost all the perennials disappeared just over a week ago, probably to the hoop houses for repotting.  Of course the big box stores have eliminated the summer plant section.   I was at Valleybrook Nurseries, the wholeale perennial growers in the spring, and there were oceans of Superstore pots going off to delivery - what a lot of plants must be sold by the Supercentres.  

Cole's has a mass show of colour out front, including a lovely garden in front of the Christmas Cottage.  I took pictures on the weekend of the gardens, as they are recipients of a commercial Trillium award for 2014. I realized how big the beds are, and how many interesting plant selections there are in the beds this year.  Walking along the beds brought the realization of the care and creativity that went into the designs. 

Here's an extract of this history of this wonderful florist/greenhouse operation, including a picture of the original greenhouse:

Providing Fine Flowers For Over 100 Years In 1891 Albert Edward Cole erected a 1,000 sqft greenhouse on the former sawmill property in Grimsby, and grew violets and vegetables. A.E. Cole’s three sons were involved at an early age selling vegetables and later delivering flowers by foot, horse and buggy or the street car that ran along Highway 8. By 1930 the greenhouse was expanded to 25,000 sqft of the property! Cole’s three sons, John, Gordon and Norman, purchased the business in 1932 and more expansion followed as the floral industry grew. The children and grandchildren all worked to make it Cole’s a success! In 1957 Norman Cole & Elizabeth became sole owners of the business and they ran the business together for 29 years. After 95 years of family ownership, Cole’s Florist was sold to Harry DeVries in 1986. See more at: http://www.colesflorist.ca/history.php Here we are in 2014, enjoying the wonderful gardens.

Garden Gems

Sweet garden moments are wonderful to experience.  Here's one we saw last week in Grimsby.


It has a diverse combination of plants that increase visual interest, along with the lovely heart shape of the planter and the little stones around the edge.  It has the sense of both a fairy garden and a floral design.  A moment of garden artistry!