Ottawa gardeners look at pots, plants, and gardening tools at a Crops-in-Pots presentation at city hall.
A local horticulturalist is urging downtown Ottawa residents to maintain an urban garden with a “crops-in-pots” approach to growing plants.
About 50 gardeners attended Edythe Falconer’s presentation at city hall recently. She demonstrated how people can grow not only flowers and vines, but also their own herbs and vegetables in containers.
“If you get some of this stuff growing in neat-looking pots and different colours and shapes, there is a bit of art in it,” says Falconer. “Enjoy yourself, don’t feel guilty if some things don’t work out. It is a learning process, and go for the glamour part of it.”
Falconer joined the Master Gardeners of Ottawa-Carleton after retiring as an Ottawa school principal 12 years ago. The group is committed to educating home gardeners through workshops and seminars. The demand for workshops on urban gardening over the past five years is one of the biggest changes she has seen in Ottawa since her retirement, says Falconer, who gives at least five seminars annually on growing plants in pots.
The Centretown Citizens Community Association’s trees and green space committee invited Falconer to give her presentation after several Centretown residents expressed a desire to learn more. Committee chairperson Bonnie Mabee says it’s difficult to find land in Centretown that is suitable for gardens. She says increasingly dense residential construction, and the concrete and asphalt surfaces that dominate downtown Ottawa, are to blame.
“Growing in containers is a valid and viable option for people living here,” she says.
Willi Wahl, who lives in a duplex near the intersection of Gladstone and Bronson avenues and attended the recent workshop, says he’s rediscovering his love for agriculture as he nears retirement. He says gardening in his residence will be important for him to eat healthier food, remain physically active and in touch with life after he retires.
Wahl grew up on a farm near Red Deer, Alta. He moved to Ottawa in 1981 and finds that highrises block out the sunlight, which gardens need.
“You have really got to find little niches and nooks and places where you can squirrel away some greenery,” he says.
Falconer’s presentation was the first time he came to such an event, he says, adding that meeting other gardeners has advantages over looking up information on the Internet.
“They’ll see something in your expression, in your composure, something in your body language and it will twig something in them,” says Wahl. “They’ll take you off in another direction where you hadn’t have thought of looking, or wouldn’t have gone before.”
As for container gardening, Falconer says there are three classifications of plants she recommends for a floral arrangement. The thriller is the tallest plant of the three and the eye-catcher. The filler is a smaller plant that leaves no large open space between growth, and the spiller hangs over the pot.
People starting out on a balcony should begin with herbs, small potatoes, and the dwarf variety of any trees or shrubs, she says.
Falconer also prefers to use organic soils and fertilizers. She likens modern agricultural practices to a mining operation in which the focus is on extraction rather than sustainability. But she will sometimes use chemical products to get the results she wants, she says.
“The most important thing is to not feel that you have to take a book and follow everything it says,” says Falconer. “The goal is to enjoy, to have something nice to eat and something nice to look at.”