Featured New Arrival: Talinum Paniculatum
Botanically speaking, Limón talinum is Talinum paniculatum and is in the portulaca family. Also called Jewels-of-Opar, this lovely annual has attractive, succulent-looking chartreuse foliage and is quick to send up arching panicles adorned with light to coral star-shaped flowers. Look forward to continuous flushes of bloom which will brighten your garden all summer long. Once the flowers take have given their all, fruit capsules remain that are amber-colored at first finishing off to a cinnamon red continue to gently sway in the wind.
Bijou D’Opar. Buy it just for the name. Sip your drink from a tall stemmed glass and remark, “Yes, I have bijou d’opar in my garden,” and feel sophisticated and superior to all the rest.
Some thoughts on being a mother…
I became a mother on Mother’s Day, May 8th, 1977 (35 years ago today; Happy Birthday beautiful boy!). It was the beginning of looking at the world in a different way. My first real sense of the power and responsibility of creation, and to date, the best and most meaningful job I have had. I am blessed in being a mother to two wonderful children and I’m blessed in running a business that is so connected to mothering – honouring life, the creating, the growing, and the nurturing, being there for all the rites of passage from birth to death – just like our mothers.
Meanwhile in the Secret Garden…
First let us blow our own horn, we were chosen as one of the top ten garden centres in Toronto by the highly respected BlogTO. Here’s an excerpt showing the criteria they used, and the nice words they had to say about us. We’re so chuffed!
A few key ingredients are imperative; a large selection of plants and/or other gardening essentials, helpful and knowledgeable staff, and a well-organized store, so even novice gardeners can find what they’re looking for. With these criteria in mind, I scored the city in search of the best spots to get your garden on.
East of Eliza
1960 Gerrard Street East, 416.461.8038
A traditional florist shop with a hidden secret garden centre, East of Eliza is perfect for finding that pretty little something for a special event or a permanent fixture in your garden oasis. Owner Reed Russell is known for her earthy and whimsical approach to planter boxes and floral arrangements. She also offers landscaping services, and has been a Beaches (or the Beach) area favourite since 1988.
It’s been fun trying to follow the steps Mother Nature has choreographed for the beginning of Spring. All set to bring in a big load of perennials but, no wait- all the growing tips on the euonymous are frost burnt …. YIKES! better wait another week! And so it has gone. Two step forward four steps back Cha Cha Cha
But as of today, Monday May 7th, the perennial benches are starting to take shape, especially the shade section. There are some particularly delicious epimediums and dicentras (what are they when they’re at home? You might also know them as Barrenwort and Bleeding Hearts). There are some lovely ferns in “Fern Hollow,” and the tougher annuals are also starting to take their places in the line up.
This week will be the Market Run equivalent of the IronWoman trials – I will be up almost every day at 2 a.m. to fill the gaps on the benches. I’m still proceeding with caution, but with the passing of the Super Moon, the barometric pressure is falling, the temperatures are rising, and garden season 2012 is off and running!
Yup, you are right- we disappeared – totally fallen down the rabbit hole!
So much has been going on here at East of Eliza; hiring and training for the secret garden, hanging out our gardening shingle, publishing a beautiful hardcover book of our wedding designs for brides to drool over, and updating Club Monaco for spring – it’s no wonder you haven’t heard from us.
We also participated in our very first Wedding Show at the Drake hotel on April 28th. It was a fun and funky assembly of some of the old pros and up and coming stars of the Wedding biz. It was deftly and professionally run by the fabulous women at The wedding Co., who also mount the oh so sophisticated Wedding Show at the Carlu.
They have been inviting us to participate for a good while, and the old war-horse who runs this business (yup that would be me) has resisted and resisted and finally i just said yes. It was great fun, and nice to know that even after all these years we still have it and can hold up our heads with all the bright young things!
The cosy quarters had me sandwiched between the great gals of Vintage China Hire and Antonia of The Loved One. By the end of the show BFFs. Thanks for the great conversation and cucumber sandwiches.
Happy Easter!
Have a beautiful, sunny holiday – and remember to stop and smell the flowers as you’re hunting for eggs!
Early Spring Planting
This beautiful spring weather with all its mixed messages – winter one day, and summer the next – gets everyone’s green thumbs itching. We’ve had requests, and even a few demands!, for herbs, impatiens, and other garden annuals. 
So here is our caution, frost is still probable until April 30th, and frost will kill or badly damage most plants planted now. Any garden plants we could bring in have been happily growing in greenhouses or warmer climates. To put them into our gardens now and expose them to our weather would be a bit like someone dragging you out of bed in the middle of winter, shoving you outdoors, and saying “toughen up!” – cruel and unusual punishment.
But don’t despair, just because it is too soon for most plants, doesn’t mean it is too soon for all plants. There are a few hardy souls who can happily brave this cold weather. They are the ones blooming in gardens already – bulbs, primulas, and hellebores. Hellebores and primulas will also come back year after year. Forced bulbs (the growing bulbs you can buy in spring) are less likely to come back than the bulbs you plant in autumn – but there’s still a good chance. Many patches of tulips in my garden (bright orange ones with a purple stripe, velvety black ones, and soft butter yellow ones) are from forced bulbs that I simply couldn’t resist. When it comes to plants, I am like Oscar Wilde who said, “I can resist everything except temptation.”
The nice thing about planting these early perennials is that every following spring you get the early colour you’re longing for after a monochromatic winter.
Another way to flood your garden with colour is pansies. The earliest of annuals, their big happy faces will keep blooming and blooming until the heat of summer hits. If the cold weather snaps, and we all need to bundle back up into our winter coats again, the pansies flowers will fade, but the plants wont die, and new buds will form as the sun warms them.
Celebrate Love!
Florists, like hairdressers, hear it all. We’ve listened to love stories in all their forms; tales of love and loss, romance and lust, tender affection, sweet family moments, and saucy jokes between friends. We’ve also heard the cynics, who say “Why do I need a Day to tell me when to love someone? They know.” But sometimes we could all use a reminder to show it, and we could all use a little extra love.
What we do know is that the more personal the gift is, the more it tells them how well you know and appreciate them. Some of you know right away – her favourite flower is tulips, or your Dad is a passionate gardener – but for those of you who still feel mystified we can decode your loved one’s affections.
Each of our bouquets and arrangements are created with the individual recipient in mind, so whether it is one of our sumptuous bouquets that epitomize romance, or fresh and simple with a delicious array of local spring favourites, tell us a little bit about the recipient and we’ll do our best to make it a perfect fit.
This valentine’s day, send flowers to the one you love, whether it is yourself, your lover, your best friend, or your mom.
In the immortal words of Bo Diddley, “Who do you love?”
Send spring, fresh and simple, with:
a straight-forward “I love you” with:
or a blaze of colour to light up their day, with one of our mixed bouquets. See if you see a colour palate below that would suit your sweetie, or we will custom make one for you!:
The Urn Fairies and other Winter Tales
Two weeks into December and so much has happened already!
We created a lot of winter urns in the neighbourhood and beyond. My Dad sent me a quote of a slip-up on the radio that Heather Bambrick said one morning: “and this evening, flowers, uh that’s flurries and/or showers…” and I laughed because that was exactly what creating urns was like; we never knew what was coming next, snow or rain or beautiful weather, and it was always mixed up with lots of greenery. We spent a lot of time in our ridiculously huge rain pants. There were many days when we were each wearing two rain coats (one on top of the other), our big rain pants, rubber boots, rubber gloves over finger gloves, scarves and tuques. Never have we looked so silly on a job. At least… not since last winter!
One sweet gentleman greeted us at the door with, “Ah-ha! The urn fairies have arrived!”
So, here are some of the things the urn fairies brought:
We were also commissioned to build a small forest outside Club Monaco. 
They revamped the store for the holiday season, and it looks gorgeous! Using items like leather-bound books, a rope banister, driftwood, terrariums, and many other touches they’ve created a decor that is all the best of Club Monaco – simple, elegant, and rooted in everyday life.
Outside is a variety of evergreen trees and holly bushes. In fact, when the head office of Club Monaco saw the first instalment of trees we had put out front, they immediately said, “Double it!”
So we did. 
Back indoors things haven’t been so quite either. The store is all a-twinkle with lights
(the holidays are so pretty at night). It’s filled with holiday traditionals, such as cypress tress, cyclamen, poinsettias, amaryllis, frosty ferns, azaleas, and paperwhites. Ornaments gleam from every hook, and every nook and cranny is filled. We’ve been busily been creating plant baskets, wreaths, fresh arrangements of seasonal greens, and floral arrangements.
The backyard garden centre is filled with seasonal greens, garland, wreaths, branches, and more. In short, it’s filled with everything you could need to decorate the outside of your house, except paint and christmas lights.
Geeking Out While Gardening
It all started when I unloaded the truck, and without any planning the bins of plants arranged themselves into a waterfall of colour on the steps. I almost didn’t want to disturb them by planting them in urns, they were so beautiful the way they were. So with excited eyes open to the wonder of the world, we started to look around. The dogwood tree beside the steps was fruiting, it’s unsual fruit hanging like brilliant exoctic cherries beneath the leaves. Also as the dogwoods leaves had been burnished with fall colour the sun had shaped the colours path, so only the exposed parts of the leaves had turned russet red. Where one leaf overlapped another, the shadow was still bright spring green. It was almost as if the spirit of autumn had spraypainted on the colour on, and been slightly careless in its task.
When we pulled an ivy from its pot, we noticed how the roots had turned a beautiful the bright green from what looked like an algae growing on them. On the inside of the pot the roots and algae had left a delicate pattern that looked like white trees branching out with green algae leaves. Now it might not be everyone who gets delighted by an empty plant pot, but I like my pleasures both small and large; the world is so rich this way.
Autumn Urns
We’ve been planting autumn urns for the past few weeks. It’s been fun playing with the glowing autumn colours there’s so much fire and sunlight in them. The hardest part is frequently keeping the subtlety and softness in our designs, rather than yielding to garish colour combinations that jump up and down on your eyeballs for attention. Vibrant is one thing we love, but garish is best avoided. Here are three urns that I loved for their soft warm glow. To me they go perfectly with the high blue skies we’ve been having, and the bright warm autumn days.
