Well, the first week of August has come and gone, and gardeners are beginning to take stock as to what has made it through the summer; what is dying off early; and what they might want to change for the next year.

Here in my home town of Winnipeg and throughout most of usually sunny Manitoba, the weather so far this summer has been wet, and I’m talking the wet of biblical proportions. Many venerable gardens have been decimated by the water and as a result, molds, mildews and fungi have destroyed numerous flowers and shrubs that once graced them in style. Some have been so severely affected that many people have altogether abandoned gardening for the remainder of the year. Yet, there are the few gardens that seem to have ridden out the storms and tumultuous weather to produce a fine display of plants.

	A local church courtyard in bloom

A couple of us here at Northscaping, myself included, are volunteer judges for the local ‘Communities In Bloom’ program, a national effort to beautify residential and commercial properties across Canada using flowers and gardens. Last weekend, I was judging yards for our the annual ‘Winnipeg In Bloom Flower Power Competition’, and was pleasantly surprised with what I saw. While the evidence of the foul weather was everywhere, you could also see that many people put in a great deal of effort attempting to create beautiful gardens of flowering plants and vegetables.

It was apparent, though, that the severe weather had taken its toll on a number of gardens, forcing many of the entrants to remove their identifier signs which indicated to us to judge the property, while others had contacted the organizers to have their properties removed from the entrants list. The best story came from a yard that had been slated for judging; when we (the judges) arrived, the beds were totally free of plants, but the soil was nicely tilled and cleaned. If we could have, we would have awarded a prize for honesty!

Neighborhood beautification garden in full splendor

Nonetheless, we did manage to judge all 65 yards in our allocated area, even though the summer weather had since turned from the tempest of rain to a steam bath on the plains of the planet Venus (that’s what you get when you have one month straight of knee-deep rain followed by one month of sweltering heat…). It was nice to see a number of people who had cast aside the weather and tended their yards and made an effort to achieve a really appealing presentation even though ‘Mother Nature’ was throwing one curveball after another. We did, finally, come up with a winner, though for our area it was very close; just one point difference between the winner and the first runner up. The results of the Flower Power Competition will be announced next weekend at an awards gala.

If you are looking for new things to do to make your yard appealing, and are aware of a similar competition in your community, I would strongly suggest you check out their website or attend the awards ceremonies to see what your neighbors have done. We at Northscaping would like to see how well your city, town or even hamlet did this year. I want to encourage you to send us your images; either e-mail them to us directly, or post them yourself in the Community Photo Album.

Until then, have a summer filled with flowers and gardening fun, as winter is just around the corner. Happy planting!

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