'It's perfect this year': Green thumbs and greenhouses ready for busy weekend

CBC

· Posted: May 16, 2025 6:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago

London gardeners are flocking to section greenhouses to stitchery supplies for a fun-filled agelong May weekend, portion unit eagerly hole for the rush.

Late outpouring is erstwhile radical thin to get superior astir their gardens, and arsenic the upwind warms up, the hazard of a abrupt frost wiping retired caller plants is overmuch lower. Victoria Day weekend, which falls connected May 17 to 19 this year, typically makes for a bully accidental to get things increasing successful the ground in clip for summer. 

With the caller lukewarm temperatures, Bronwyn Powell said she's feeling optimistic astir a play of gardening while out buying for begonias astatine Van Lujk Greenhouses and Garden Centre successful London's eastbound end.

"We're connected the location agelong now," she said. "I deliberation this you'll spot tons of radical planting and playing successful the dirt." 

Across municipality astatine Parkway Garden Centres, Luba Adamson was engaged filling her cart with flowers. She admitted this wasn't her archetypal buying spree of the week. 

"It's cleanable this year," she said. "The crushed is bully and moist, and we've had this extended spring." 

Adamson said the amusive of gardening is getting retired of her comfortableness zone, truthful each twelvemonth she challenges herself to effort thing new. This year, she's planting dahlias. She said adjacent though her plot lacks the sunlight they emotion truthful much, she's feeling up to the challenge.

"Every year, my motto is: 'This volition beryllium my champion plot yet' and each twelvemonth it's been true." 

At Van Lujk's, greenhouse idiosyncratic Santhosh Kumar Shanmuga Sundaram has been preparing for the rush. He expects to merchantability tons of rootlike plants, garden attraction tools and fertilizer for soil, helium said. 

Every year, definite plants tin beryllium much fashionable than others, helium said, and this twelvemonth he's already picked up connected a fewer trends.  

"David Austin roses are truly popular, and we've astir sold out of them already,"  helium said, referring to the high-end English roses. "Bougainvilleas are truly celebrated this year, too." 

A engaged play for plot centres

Nikolai Jacobsen is the caller CEO of Parkway Garden Centre, wherever they've been busy stocking shelves, getting orders successful and making definite they're afloat staffed for the weekend. 

"This is the clip to works if you privation to get that afloat summertime of colour," helium said.  

At Parkway, Jacobsen said container gardening is getting much fashionable for radical surviving successful apartments.

"Pottery neutral tones are big," helium said. "People are going for your greys, beiges and terracotta—nothing excessively bright, thing excessively fancy." 

For homeowners with tons of outdoor space, he's noticed a surge successful autochthonal trees and perennials, similar the sweetener maple and trillium. Both are iconic Canadian plants, helium added. 

Advice for caller gardeners

For anyone planting their archetypal garden this weekend, Jacobsen's words of contented are to commencement tiny and inquire questions.

"It's a batch of work," helium said. "You've got to truly cognize what you're doing." 

Knowing what benignant of fertilizer to use, erstwhile to usage it and however often to h2o your antithetic plants are each important for a palmy garden, helium said. 

If it each seems a spot daunting, Adamson said not to interest excessively much.

"Learning from the schoolhouse of hard knocks is fun," she said. "And I find that gardeners are the astir generous radical successful the satellite with their plants and with their advice."