Darwin called these creatures the "ploughs of the earth". Without worms we simply wouldn't have soil. Or food.

The Wormy Truth:

1. Every acre of soil can contain a million worms. You’re lucky if you have this many.
2. Nightcrawlers—the burrowing worms—pull leaves downward into the soil as they eat them, aerating soil and leaving fertile castings—the worm poo we love.
3. Red Wigglers—the surface living worms—live on partially decomposed organics; they’re the ones used in home worm composters (vermicompost, if you want to get fancy). They can eat half their body weight in food every day. I bought a vermicomposter last year during the garbage strike, and all my tea bags and banana peels go there, instead of my city bin. Why should the city get all the good stuff?
4. Humus creation—the most important natural chemical in soil—is one of the best upsides of worms. Humus lets plants absorb existing soil nutrients and helps them withstand drought. You can pour gallons fertilizer onto soil—not that I’m recommending that!—but if there’s no humus, nothing will happen.

Best way to add more worms to your garden is to mulch with anything organic, leaves, compost, grass clippings, even cardboard. Make sure no bare soil is showing. It’s all food for the worms, who do the garden work for you while you sleep.

Country in town: Ashbridges Bay, Toronto. Chicory, Queen Anne's Lace and sweet clover in bloom.

Before green apples blush,
Before green nuts embrown,
Why one day in the country
Is worth a month in town.

I agree completely with poet Christina Rossetti on this one. But while there isn’t any way to get “city” in the country—unless you count high speed internet—luckily there are plenty of places to get “country” in the city. You just have to find it. Back alleys, vacant lots, and untamed parkland are now full of wild flowers, like Queen Anne’s Lace, intensely blue chicory, and—the smell of summer, for me—sweet clover. I’m thrilled to have these wild green spaces in the city, like Evergreen Brickworks, and Ashbridges Bay by the lake. One thing, however, I’m sure I won’t see in the city is a group of wild turkeys crossing the road like those I saw this weekend in the country.

Why did the wild turkeys cross the road? Peer pressure, perhaps?

If you feel like Christina Rossetti and me, let us know  your city / country strategy. Fave places to go? Share in the comments!

These succulents are planted into hollowed out mushroom table funghi.

Gardeners get to be good at finding objects to plant into. You don’t always have the perfect pot at hand when a plant needs a home. You might be planning a garden on a shoestring, so you make do with what’s lying around the house. Gardeners have been known to repurpose any hollow object we might discover.

My first roof garden many years ago was made in part with milk crates lined with plastic. Red plastic milk crates are not particularly attractive on their own, but I disguised the outside with bamboo curtain blinds. Good thing about crates is they hold a lot of soil, and stack nicely.

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Dino is friendly & knowledgeable, surrounded by happy plants and the great rain barrels Fiesta sells.

The people at Fiesta Gardens would never think of taking plants off a delivery truck and then forgetting about them, or letting them bake in the sun to fend for themselves. Plants in many retail spaces are lucky to get a splash of water now and then, but that’s not the case here. Here we have a plant enthusiast, Margaret, who really cares about the plants she provides. Between Margaret and Dino, the two plant specialists here, plants are well sourced, well researched and well looked after till you get them in your hot little hands. (especially hot these days!)

I caught Dino and Margaret at Fiesta Gardens on a blistering hot day and they took time out from ushering out orders or cleaning perennials to tell me a bit about themselves.

Margaret came to the garden world like many other gardeners, from the world of art. I find it is often a natural progression for many artists and writers, to take relish in nature, growing things and creating spaces of beauty. She has lectured at the Royal Ontario Museum and worked in pottery, and said it’s only natural that she became interested in plants, as the clay of pots comes “from the earth”. She’s also something of a scientist and researcher, and constantly has botanical projects on the go at the store and at home, ever curious to enlarge her knowledge of the plants she provides. Growing up in a tropical country no doubt primed her interest in growing things, and she is currently passionate about the plants of Africa.

Horticultural education is crucial to Margaret, she wants to know that the plants she sells are going to thrive when you get them home, and she’ll fill you in on any plant requirements and how to look after the ones you buy.

Dino’s main passion are the large nursery items, the shrubs and trees, but he is particular about the annuals and vegetable starts he sells too. He was sprucing up an order of massive hanging annual planters when I spoke to him. To me they looked magnificent, he said, “They weren’t bad.” High standards here.

Apart from the fact that the plants are well cared for and ready to thrive when you get them home, the selection is fantastic too, with unusual specimens of vegetables, like black-eyed peas, callaloo, and scotch bonnet hot peppers, among others. The Hort Couture section is full of hard-to-find plant specimens like agapanthus, castor bean, and many other varieties new to me.

All this is available right downtown, no need to drive out to the burbs to buy a tree. And when you buy that tree, or pot of annuals, you know it’s had the best head start it could possibly have.

Fiesta Gardens now sells the popular Urban Harvest organic Seed Collection

Just Arrived:

Many vegetables and herbs including Organic Red Oak Leaf Lettuce, a must for any vegetable garden.