A Garden in the City for Mosiac Monday

Lake Simcoe South Master Gardeners had the priviledge of visiting the garden of Paul Zammit and his partner Uli last week.   Paul Zammit is the Director of Horticulture at the Toronto Botanical Gardens and Uli wields her expertise at Plant World, a huge Nursery in the west end of Toronto.  The tour began in the driveway with Paul explaining to us that the soil on this property is sandy.   You could see my jaw drop.   I garden on sand too.   Their sandy soil is amended heavily with leaves in the fall.  The neighbours drop bags of leaves on their driveway and Paul mulches them up with the lawnmower.   The front lawn was packed with flowers and shrubs and a big SweetGum Tree.  The garden extended right out to the pavement of the street.   Up by the house were huge planters.   Paul Zammit is the king of the container.  He plants all kinds of varieties of plants and even vegetables and herbs in planters.   The sides of the house were planted with Hostas.  The backyard had a huge deck and it was filled with planters and shelves of planters.  A large gate divided the backyard from the deck.  There was every kind of Japanese Maple and huge Hosta.   In the lower left of the bottom corner of the mosiac you can see the Podophyllum or Mayapple 'Spotty Dotty' that was in flower.   Paul explained about all the plants and was gracious to answer all our questions.   Janet, our Social Convenor had a lovely spread of goodies to munch on while we ogled the plants.  She had picked strawberries that day and hand dipped them in chocolate.  Oh Heaven.    It was a wonderful evening in a beautiful garden.   Paul gave us all a piece of purple plantain from his garden to try in ours.  I hope you like the photos of the garden.  Have a great gardening week.  Valerie

More mosiacs can be found at Mary's DearLittleRedHouse.