The Calgary Gardener

Now you can learn about gardening from those who know best. The authors of this book, The Calgary Horticultural Society, are all Calgarians, all gardeners, and they know how to produce glorious blooms, tasty vegetables, elegant lawns, and healthy trees and shrubs in the unique climate of Alberta's Chinook region. They know that what works in more hospitable climates won't necessarily succeed where frequent winter thaws, heavily alkaline soils, and drying summer winds constantly challenge a gardener's ingenuity. The Calgary Gardener is jam-packed with up-to-date information and illustrations, as well as colour photographs of picturesque Calgary gardens and recommended annuals and perennials. With hundreds of years of combined gardening experience, the authors share their accumulated wisdom in a lively and inviting style. Beginning and veteran gardeners alike will find both inspiration and hours of enjoyment in this comprehensive and practical guide.

The Calgary Gardener, Volume Two: Beyond the Basics was written in response to genuine enthusiasm expressed by local gardeners for more information on successful garden design, planting, and maintenance. This "next step" is full of new gardening details, how-to's, historical anecdotes, and helpful plant lists for both beginner and advanced gardeners. The Calgary Gardener provided the basics, Volume Two: Beyond the Basics expands on those successful concepts and takes gardeners into new gardening territory. Ideas for designing and planting gardens that evoke the senses, excite the imagination, and are beautiful and practical extensions of a home's living space are presented here.

David More is one of western Canada's exceptional painters. Based in the rural hamlet of Benalto, near Red Deer Alberta, he is part of a generation of landscape artists who emerged in the 1970s to make beauty out of the ordinary and challenge the expected with bold acts of creation. Throughout his career, More has returned to the garden as a deeply functional yet ritualistic space of human endeavour. The garden is a place of shelter and sanctuary, of colour and fragrance, of order and wilderness. The garden is a private space, carefully tended and planted, observed en plein air or through the living-room window. The garden is a public space, a park where people gather to let their natures blossom. The garden is the world, the nature that sustains and surround us, the environment we all live within, and all have a responsibility to cultivate and tend. Greatest Garden is a celebration of David More's engagement with the garden as a multifaceted subject. Featuring over fifty original artworks, this book encompasses a career spent in conversation with gardens in their many and varied forms. With lively brushwork, a keen sense of colour, and an aptitude for expressive drawing and varied composition, More has found the garden in expected and unexpected places. In Greatest Garden you are welcomed to walk its sunlit paths.

All the most common questions about growing vegetables in the prairies are answered in this first installation of the new gardening series, Guides for the Prairie Gardener. Too often people think of vegetable gardening in the prairies as challenging, but certified master gardeners Sheryl and Janet are here to show you how rewarding it can really be. From planning to planting, they encourage you to take a hands-on approach with your prairie garden. They let you know when—and how!—to transplant your carefully nurtured seedlings in the spring, ways to shelter your plants from that inevitable July hailstorm, and how to determine how much irrigation is necessary in the arid prairie climate. They help you figure out if you should prune your tomatoes, how to hold up your pumpkins off the ground, and maximizing your harvest by planting in succession. And they show you how you can directly influence the quality of your produce, minimizing problems such as woody radishes, buttoning cauliflower, and split cabbage heads. This Q&A-style resource covers all your most common questions about cultivation practices, preventing damage from frost, flood, and drought, harvest and storage, and they cover your questions about the veggies you love to grow: Garlic, Onions, and Leeks Lettuce Brassicas Carrots, Celery, and Beets Legumes, Corn and Other Warm Season Edibles Tomatoes and Peppers Potatoes Squash, Pumpkins, and Cucumbers Whether you’ve just acquired your first garden space, or you’ve been growing vegetables for decades, gardeners are always learning and experimenting, building on the wisdom gained on their own or from others. With Sheryl and Janet on your team you’re that much closer to achieving success in your prairie garden!

Everything you need to know for a quick and beautiful yard on the Canadian prairies. Creating and maintaining the perfect yard on the prairies isn’t as hard as you might think, but the short growing season doesn’t give you much time to transform your winter-weary yard into a glorious garden. To help homeowners in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba get the jump on the short season, popular gardening expert Lyndon Penner has created the essential guide to a quick and beautiful yard in the prairie provinces. With gardening smarts, style and wit, Lyndon covers everything both novice and expert gardeners need to know, along with tips you won’t find anywhere else. Contains more than 200 beautiful, colour photos. Quickly find what you need to know about climate zones, soil, colour, texture and shade. Understand your yard’s potential. Pick the best bulbs, perennials, trees and shrubs for your yard. Deal with insects and plant diseases in environmentally friendly ways. Shop smarter at garden centres. Attract animals you want to your garden, and keep away the ones you don’t. Another version of this book, The Chinook Short Season Yard, is available for gardeners who live in the southern Alberta chinook zone. Get a free ebook through the Shelfie app with the purchase of a print copy.

This can be challenging gardening, replete with hot, dry summers and freezing winters, acidic soils, moose, mice, bears and bugs. Rather than fighting nature by trying to raise plants unsuited for a northern climate, master gardener Barbara Rayment, who has grown--and in some cases killed--nearly all of the plants in this book, helps readers get maximum results with minimum effort by selecting the right plants for their conditions. There are literally thousands of beautiful, interesting and garden-worthy perennials perfectly suited to northern conditions. Rayment moves beyond zone ratings, categorizing plants by habitat type and offering pragmatic advice on topics like watering, soil and beneficial insects, to address common frustrations associated with cold-climate gardening. From Acantholimon to Xanthorrhoeaceae, this book includes hundreds of hardy perennials, including many native plants, accompanied by hundreds of beautiful colour photographs. While glossy gardening books from warmer climates abound, the perennials described here really do thrive in zones 2 to 4, making this an indispensable reference for novice and expert northern gardeners alike.

Your guide to trouble-shooting weeds, pests, diseases, moulds, critters, and other common prairie gardener’s problems in this second title in the Guides for the Prairie Gardener series. Whether you’re an experienced prairie gardener or have just a few weeks under your belt, chances are you’ve come to know at least a couple of pesky insects, moulds, or much larger lurkers on a first-name basis. But what to do about these interlopers who can seem hell-bent on ruining your hard work? Lifelong gardeners Janet and Sheryl are here to help. In this second installment in the Guides for the Prairie Gardener series, the authors tackle the full range of suspects, including weeds, insects, microorganisms, rodents, birds, deer and even other people’s pets. Premised on a respect for the natural world and using an integrated pest management approach, they’ll show you how to identify the culprit and how to deter it, while respecting the broader environment. Should I use landscape fabric? Does vinegar work? What do I do about tent caterpillars? Why are my potatoes scabby? Why does it look like my cabbages have been attacked by miniature buckshot? And the recurring What is this thing?! Janet and Sheryl take your most pressing questions in this Q&A-style resource on all the prairie gardener’s most common pests, including thistle, dandelion, crabgrass, slugs, aphids, beetles, moths, mildew, fungus, rust, deer, rabbits, and porcupines. With elegance and a sense of humour, their solutions reveal their fascination with the natural world and belief in your ability to garden well in its midst.

Everything you need to know for a quick and beautiful yard in the Chinook zone. Creating and maintaining the perfect yard in the chinook zone isn’t as hard as you might think, but the short growing season doesn’t give you much time to transform your winter-weary yard into a glorious garden. To help Calgary-area homeowners get the jump on the short season, popular gardening expert Lyndon Penner has created the essential guide to a quick and beautiful yard in the chinook zone. With gardening smarts, style and wit, Lyndon covers everything both novice and expert gardeners need to know, along with tips you won’t find anywhere else. Contains more than 200 beautiful, colour photos. Quickly find what you need to know about climate zones, soil, colour, texture and shade. Understand your yard’s potential. Pick the best bulbs, perennials, trees and shrubs for your yard. Deal with insects and plant diseases in environmentally friendly ways. Shop smarter at garden centres. Attract animals you want to your garden, and keep away the ones you don’t. Another version of this book, The Prairie Short Season Yard, is available for gardeners who live outside the southern Alberta chinook zone. Get a free ebook through the Shelfie app with the purchase of a print copy.