Have a garden in Toronto?
Contact Gardens by Bonnie for a Garden Refresher!
Even small urban gardens can get messy with tangled weeds, crab grass, overgrown shrubs and perennials. Busy families want to be able to enjoy their gardens, not work all weekend in them! That’s where Gardens by Bonnie comes in. Using her garden design expertise, combined with decades of experience gardening in Toronto, she can quickly make your outdoor living space what you've only dreamt of!
Outdoor living in Toronto is a brief few months between May (if we’re lucky) and September. With the right garden set up, your family and friends can enjoy months of serene, easy living, right here in Toronto!! Let Gardens by Bonnie help you with ideas, and move you outside
to enjoy the fresh air and sunshine!
If you have time to read through the rest of the Gardens by Bonnie website, Services, Before & After, Portfolio, Gardening Tips, or About, you’ll realize that we are not a lawn care gardening service. We offer a boutique style gardening service, treating each garden as though it were our own. Our focus is on quality results, and is for property owners who want an experienced, personal gardener, who is knowledgeable on the specifics of Toronto flora.
Here are Bonnie’s Top 5 tips for a low maintenance garden in Toronto:
1. Remove grass lawn areas that are not used or needed. Uses or needs might be for children to play on, for pets to play on (and do other things on!), or for very large garden areas. Replace the grass with either hardscape and/or low maintenance shrubs or ground cover. Relatively inexpensive hardscape might be colourful pea gravel, or crushed rock. For a little more money mix with flag stones, or completely pave with interlocking brick or stones.
2. Limit the number of perennial flowering plants. Flowering perennials generally require maintenance in year 2 or 3, and the more invasive ones can completely take over a large area within a year or two.
3. Plant evergreens, conifers and shrubs. Evergreens, conifers and woody shrubs can be a bit more expensive to purchase initially,but they save you money in the long run. If you have limited space for your garden, or to limit the amount of trimming, cutting and maintaining, plant slow growing or dwarf varieties of shrubs/evergreens. They can sometimes be a little more expensive but will save you time and effort in later years.
4. Make sure you have easy access to a water supply, or set up a watering system. Plants need water, and if it requires lots of effort for you to provide it (e.g. you have a broken old leaky hose or no hose just a watering can) then chances are you’ll never have enough time and your plants will either die or look awful. Invest in a good hose, make sure it’s easy to access, long enough to reach all parts of the garden, and has a good quality hose nozzle attached. Even easier is if you can set up a sprinkler which you can either turn on manually or set up on a timer. For large gardens, if you can afford it, an in-ground sprinkler system is optimal.
5. Add lots of organic mulch to garden areas in the spring to limit weed growth & retain moisture. Mulch serves a number of purposes to reduce garden maintenance. It helps prevent weed seeds from getting established, and suppresses weed growth throughout the season. It also helps retain moisture in the soil, reducing the need to water as frequently during dry spells. It also provides a neat, clean look to improve the overall appearance of a garden.I'll be expanding on these five points in future posts, as there are a number of things experience has taught me when creating low-maintenance gardens. Stay tuned!