YORKTON - Gardening season is coming; I’m sure that gardeners everywhere are getting eager to “talk shop” as we look forward to spring! Here’s a good opportunity!
The Yorkton and District Hort Society will be holding their first meeting of 2023 on March 15 at the Yorkton Public Library. Our special guest will be Dana from Mehan Flowers, and she’ll be telling us about growing specialty cut flowers, perfect for any occasion! Won’t that be a lovely topic to get us thinking about spring! Come out, everyone is welcome! Be watching our website, www.yorktonhort.ca, for information about upcoming meetings.
One more exciting, news-worthy event to share with you: the Yorkton and District Horticultural Society would like to congratulate one of our members, Glen Tymiak, for receiving the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal for his contributions in education. Glen has received countless and well-deserved accolades for his gardening over the years, and now this is a very special recognition for his efforts and enthusiasm in other areas. Congratulations, Glen, this is very exciting, and we are very proud of you!
I love reading about gardening, and one thing that I have seen a few times for the 2023 garden is having a ‘cottage garden’. It’s one of those expressions that you hear and think you know what it is, but if there was a Garden Jeopardy and that question came up, what would we say? Here’s my homework.
A ‘cottage garden’ is probably what many of us are doing right now: it is a garden with a mixture of vegetables and flowers for cutting, perennials, and many of our traditional favourites.
If we picture a cottage garden, it wouldn’t be only the traditional straight ‘row on row’ of plants; the plants and the form of the garden would be a bit looser, more casual with more curving lines, and a thicker than normal planting to make it look like all our plants are tumbling into one another with joy.
(Now a note for gardeners who like the straight and narrow rows of veg: you can still go with that for maximum productivity and ease of weeding; but why not consider having a corner of the garden a little more relaxed, with colorful plants and wavy edges? Or, rather than have a twenty foot row of beets or beans, break it up with a small circle of flowers planted in the middle, maybe extending over a couple rows: It will give color, interest, and will help attract beneficial insects! Be a little daring, use your imagination, and you can have the best of both worlds!)
A cottage garden also has a selection of herbs: pretty to look at and delicious to eat! If you have room for only a few, pick the best-loved and most-used: dill, parsley, rosemary, sage, thyme. If you are running out of garden space, remember that herbs do very well in containers, so you can keep a collection near your back step for easy access while you are cooking!
The wonderful thing about gardening is that there is always something new for us to try, and it doesn’t matter if we have a big garden or a more compact space or just a collection of containers holding our favorites! I’m thinking that the imaginative gardener can easily grow a “container cottage garden” with a mixture of vegetables in containers, flowers, and then a few containers of herbs! And the beauty of this is that you can moved them around so that they are always looking interesting!
Thank you to our friends at YTW for their continues fine work! Great to see our local news.
Gardeners, what will be your garden trend for this year? Think about it and have a great week!
