Dear gardeners

Welcome to our first national edition of Canada’s Local Gardener!

Folks in Manitoba will know that we’ve been publishing gardening magazines for 23 years, starting with Manitoba Gardener. Then we added Ontario Gardener, and shortly after that, Alberta Gardener. So, we’re new to the national scene, but not to gardening.

Canada is a big country. To help us keep our finger on the pulse of everything gardening from coast to coast, we’ve assembled a select team of Canada’s best gardeners to form an editorial board, who will meet a few times per year to talk about what’s going on.

In addition to the editorial board, we want to hear from you, our readers. Tell us what you liked in this issue, what you didn’t like, and what you and your community have planned for the coming year. We want to hear about it! We’ll print a few of your letters and we’ll read them all. Send your thoughts to me at shauna@pegasuspublications.net.

Magazine publishing has changed a lot in the past couple of decades. When we started, there were three national gardening magazines and others for BC and Quebec. Now… well, anyone who was publishing a gardening magazine for the money has given up. As for us? We do it for love.

For this issue, you’ll see four gardeners and find out something about what makes them tick. I visited Helen Hogue’s Winnipeg garden the summer before COVID and learned a thing or two about how she raises monarch butterflies to release. Dorothy (our owner and my mother) and I visited the terrace garden of Victoria Beattie in Calgary to take some pictures and find out how she keeps things lush up in the air. Roy Morris from near Saint John, New Brunswick has sent us some photos (after I begged him!) and told me something about his lifelong passion for making things beautiful. And interior design duo Colin and Justin, who you may know from TV, have shared with us the outdoor side of a fantastic adult treehouse near Durham, Ontario, which is featured in their latest book, Escapology.

The “why don’t you…” article is on pineapple and how you can grow it from the top of one you’ve bought at the grocery store. There’s a story on fairy gardens and another on hugelkultur, which is, essentially, gardening on a heap of soil and logs. Robert Pavlis tells us about growing hot peppers and what kind of nonsense you’ll find on the internet about making them hotter. And you can find a primer on growing tomatoes on your balcony or patio for next year.

There’s an article on caring for your garden tools, in addition to a Two Olde Dawgs article and video online for making a space for your tools. And there’s an article on deer and what you can do to keep them out of your garden. (Spoiler: the answer is, try everything and keep at it!) And there are a few stories besides.

Before I close, I’ll mention our How to get started article at the back of the magazine. This article appears in every issue and it’s meant for new gardener who simply don’t know where to start with gardening. The Garden Primer covers the basics, step by step, in one simple way. As you spend time gardening and listening to neighbours and friends, you’ll find other things that work for you, but until then, you have these methods to get you through. Good luck!

And so, dear readers, enjoy your latest issue of Canada’s Local Gardener. Share it with a friend (or buy a friend a subscription!) and do tell me what you think. I look forward to hearing from you!

Shauna Dobbie' Editor shauna@pegasuspublications.net