Sunday, September 13, 2009

No Mow: No Blow:No H20







Royal Botanical Gardens
Hamilton
No Mow! No Blow! No H20
Sept 10, 2009, the Royal Botanical Gardens opened a new exhibit called No Mow!, No Blow! No H2O.
In a cedar hedge enclosed setting at the Laking Garden location of the expansive RBG, they have created three different landscapes designed to teach and inspire all gardeners. Moving beyond a wide range of beautiful gardens, the RBG visitor can view the three vignettes representing three styles of environmentally prudent gardens, to inspire us to rethink some of our well entrenched but ecologically poor garden practices. While we gardeners may think about what a wonderful part of God’s creation our gardens may be, we may not be conscious of what harm we do to Mother nature to get where we are.
The RBG’s new gardens show us how to have beautiful gardens without resorting to carbon spewing lawn mowers and leaf blowers. Watering can be all but eliminated with native and drought tolerant planting. Why bother with chemical fertilizers when fallen leaves and grass clippings natural, healthy for the garden and free. Once you have finished admiring and photographing the gardens and clever home/cottage style facades, you can flip open the mailbox at the street front of each garden for info on the waste of some of our past gardening practices and ideas for more ecologically practices.
Visit http://www.rbg.ca/ for hours of operation. While there check out the extensive list of workshops, special events, music and speakers held throughout the year. I could only wish that Bracebridge were closer to the wide variety of activites at the Royal Botanical gardens in Hamilton.
Although their gardens are great, the RBG is not just for gardeners.

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