Vert-à-Go

This weekend is Gardenscape, Saskatoon’s annual horticulture trade show. As always, there will be a large number of booths (420 this year) dealing with all things green and growing, as well as nine feature gardens (including ones demonstrating water-conscious gardening and vertical gardening). The auction of all plants used in the show will be held at 6:30 on Sunday evening in the main theatre.

The feature speaker for 2009 is author, journalist and environmental activist Des Kennedy. He will be giving two talks daily, one on ‘Garden Artristry’ and another on ‘The Exquisite Artistry of Chinese Gardens’ (check the schedule for exact times). For those with a particular interest in food gardening, you may also want to check out the following talks and demonstrations:

Friday, 27 March (Speakers’ Theatre)

• 4pm Best Vegetables for Saskatchewan (Doug Waterer, U of S Plant Sciences)
• 6pm Fruits of Saskatchewan (Forrest Scharf, Provincial Fruit Specialist)
• 7pm Growing and Processing Herbs (Connie Kehler & Helga Halfinger/Helga’s Herbs, Herb Spice Association)

Saturday, March 28

Speakers’s Theatre

• 12 noon Drinking Your Garden: a primer on home wine making (Cedric Gillott, 2007 Gold Medalist, International Cider Competition)
  3pm Living Roof Tops (Goya Ngan, Saskatoon)
• 4pm The Buzz Around Bees Will Chalmers (Saskatoon Area Bee Club)
• 6pm Organic Gardening & Pesticide Alternatives (Patricia Hanbidge, Saskatoon School of Horticulture)

Demonstration Theatre (Hall D)

• 11am Growing and Using Edible Herbs (Fran Eldridge, Fran’s House of Herbs)
• 2pm Ask A Horticulture Expert (Spencer Early/Early’s Farm & Garden Centre, Rick Van Duyvendyk/Dutch Growers Garden Centre, Patricia Hanbidge/Saskatoon School of Horticulture. Vic Krahn, Lakeshore Garden Centre)

Sunday, March 29 (Speakers’ Theatre)

• 2pm Garden Insects: The Good, The Bad, and The (not necessarily) Ugly (Cedric Gillott, Professor Emeritus U of S Biology)

Get the full schedule here!

Gardenscape 2009

When: Friday 27 March (noon-10pm) , Saturday 28 March (10am-9pm), Sunday 29 March (11am-5pm)

Where: Prairieland Park Trade Centre, 503 Ruth Street West, Saskatoon  (Google map)

Cost: $8 ($12 for 2 days), Students 15 & under FREE, Butterflies & Blooms Exhibit $3

For more information: Gardenscape web site

Work is continuing apace on the front garden—you can see a new long bed for anemones extending along the sidewalk, with a new rock border. This border creates a nice wide edge with space for bulbs, and make it harder for our two small people to stomp across the middle of the yard and through the flower beds.

We stacked the old pieces of sod up along the edges of what will be the path, to get it out of the road while we’re working. I’ve been burying some of it upside down in the newly dug beds (about a foot down) so it can compost all by itself.

And what’s that poking up in the middle?

It’s the beginning of the herb spiral!

I shovelled dirt into a mound (could have gotten rid of some more of the upside-down turf on the bottom of it, but for some reason I forgot to stick it in), and then I started pressing rocks into the base to see how big we needed to make it. We actually enlarged it somewhat after this picture; it’s about 1.3m across.

We stacked up two layers of rocks all round, then once we got all the way around, started moving in to create the spiral and a small planting area at the top. We finished building it after it was too dark to take a picture, so I’ll have to post one tomorrow! It was a really fun project.