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What to Grow
How much time do you want to spend gardening? Remember, the more suited a plant is to your particular environment, the less attention it will take to thrive.
If you’re on a rocky, windswept Daniel Point cliff, look at ornamental grasses, sedums and other typical rock-garden plants. Salt spray is carried quite a distance on the wind, so make sure plants are salt-tolerant.
In Kleindale, it’s a few degrees colder, and that makes the difference between a borderline plant surviving the winter, or not. The dramatic Elephant Ear plant returns every spring behind Garden Bay Pub, but it won’t survive a Kleindale winter. On the up side, Kleindale has an abundance of local honeybees and, in some areas, the best topsoil around.
Gardening is a balancing act in the ever-changing micro-environment of your yard.
If you’re surrounded by towering trees, they’re using most of the available sunlight, much of the water in the soil, and increasing acidity with shed needles. On the other hand, they provide shelter from the wind and sun. You’ll be able to grow many different plants without them, but chances are that what’s there now will suffer or not survive.
Finally, remember that our area is put on water-use restrictions every summer. This means sprinkling and any other type of irrigation except hand-watering, so your garden should be reasonably tolerant of a bit of drought. Most herbs grow particularly well in our climate, thriving on sunshine, summer drought and poor soil. We warn you not to plant oregano: it’s invasive, unattractive when mature and almost impossible to eradicate.
The “Western Garden Encyclopedia” (Sunset) is a favourite reference of local gardeners. Armed with a bit of knowledge about your property’s characteristics, you’ll be able to choose hundreds of plants to thrive in your garden. Pam, Gini or their staff will happily answer any specific plant questions and make recommendations on selections from their nursery stock.
This seems like a good place to mention, “How to Get Your Lawn and Garden Off Drugs,” a great little book by Pender Harbourite Carol Rubin (2003, Harbour Publishing).
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Local Soil
Our soil typically... isn’t. Most topsoil is painstakingly trucked in from a few local sources and the Fraser Valley to replace clay and rock of various sizes and types.
Existing soil is acidic, great for rhododendrons but not so great for lush green lawns without the regular addition of lime. But, this is a small price to pay for a garden that can feature palm trees, roses blooming in December and fresh veggies almost year-round.
Our Pender Harbour soil seems to grow rocks better than anything else. Every spring, new ones of various sizes appear at the surface of the soil, squeezed up by the roots of large evergreen trees. We suggest that you incorporate natural rock into your landscaping plans, because you’ll never get rid of it.
Composting not only takes care of a quantity of what would otherwise be garbage, but it’s a wonderful amendment to poor soil.
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Garden Pests
The biggest challenge Pender Harbour gardeners have is protecting their plants from opportunistic wildlife.
A herd of 1,200-pound elk visiting your yard overnight can eat, uproot and trample virtually every plant, leaving behind crater-like hoofprints and large quantities of, um, manure. We also have the biggest slugs in the country, and they can create a fair bit of devastation to leafy, tender, young plants such as hostas and lettuce.
Snakes and frogs are friends in the garden, dining on slugs and other creatures that want to dine on your plants. Geese eat slugs too but, believe me, you don’t want to encourage geese in your yard. As birds, they’re related to seagulls, and we all know what seagulls do a lot of besides make noise.
It takes a sturdy, high fence to keep out elk and deer, but it’s the best solution. Don’t waste your time tying little cheesecloth sacks of hair clippings and other weird things to your prized shrubs; the elk don’t care.
We have a selection of smaller pests, aphids and so forth, but they’re not a serious problem with most plants. We urge you not to use chemical pesticides on your garden, in consideration of plant-nibbling pets and wildlife, and because many of us obtain our drinking water from wells. Chemicals sprayed on your garden end up in the groudwater.
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Indigenous (native) Plants
There are a number of “wild” gardens in the area, featuring indigenous plants that tolerate acidic soil and enthusiastic slugs. That wild look allows one to let the plants grow with minimal pruning and weeding; the natural effect is low-maintenance and carefree, one that might be perfect for your garden if you’d rather spend time relaxing than working in your yard.
You’ll find columbine, tiger lily, lily-of-the-valley, foxglove, salal, sedums and many other species on roadsides. An afternoon with a trowel and a bucket can be the beginning of your own wild garden.
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Pender Harbour Gardening Club
604-883-0295
Do you have a passion for ornamental plants, landscaping and gardening? Join Pender Harbour Gardening Club members at their monthly meetings, trade seeds and cuttings, and help in community horticultural projects.
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Gardening Quotes
"Gardening is not a rational act." -- Margaret Atwood (Bluebeard's Egg, 1986)
"When the world wearies and society fails to satisfy, there is always the garden." -- Minnie Aumonier
"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed." -- Francis Bacon
“Your first job is to prepare the soil. The best tool for this is your neighbor's garden tiller. If your neighbor does not own a garden tiller, suggest that he buy one.” -- Dave Barry
"A gardener learns more in the mistakes than in the successes." -- Barbara Borland
"No winter lasts forever, no spring skips its turn, April is a promise that May is bound to keep. And we know it." -- Hal Borland
"A garden is never so good as it will be next year." -- Thomas Cooper
“Gardening is how I relax; it's another form of creating and playing with colours.” -- Oscar de la Renta
"A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I have never had so many good ideas day after day as when I worked in the garden." -- John Erskine
“A garden is the best alternative therapy.” -- Germaine Greer
"I'm not really a career person. I'm a gardener, basically." -- George Harrison
"The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies." -- Gertrude Jekyll
"We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses." -- Abraham Lincoln
"The trouble with gardening is that is does not remain an avocation. It becomes an obsession." -- Phyllis McGinley
"I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers." -- Claude Monet
"There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments." -- Janet Kilburn Phillips
"Bread feeds the body... flowers feed the soul." -- The Koran
"If you want to be happy for an hour, get drunk; if you want to be happy for three days, get married; if you want to be happy forever, make a garden." -- Chinese proverb
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Offsite Gardening Links
BC Garden Zones - Grow Natural
The Spirit of Gardening - Gardenweb
Gardens West magazine - GardenWise magazine
Gardening 101
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