Limelight Hydrangeas

Location: Berkeley Street 

Date photo taken: 18 September 2024

Walking up Berkely Street, there's a garden bed planted with small shrubs that have for some time been simply overflowing with the most magnificent flowers. Thanks to the signage so thoughtfully included by whoever planted these, I know that they are Limelight Hydrangeas and that I should be able to appreciate the blooms for a few more weeks yet. While there are great apps to help the curious identify plants, I love that in this case, I didn't have to pull out my phone to know what I was looking at, especially considering that this bed isn't part of a city park or associated with a garden centre.

Crocus

Location: Everywhere

Date photo taken: 12 April 2022

You know that spring is officially here and making a stand when gardens begin to sport splashes of purple and yellow. I have always thought of crocuses as the quintessential sign of spring in southern Ontario so I was a little surprised to learn that they aren't native to North America. Their ability to tolerate extremes of hot and cold make them ideal for our climate however, and their perennial nature, early blooming and glorious colours make them popular for gardens. 

Fun fact: The prairie crocus, which is the provincial flower of Manitoba, isn't actually a crocus. It's an an anemone, belonging to the buttercup family.

Lilacs

Location: Riverside neighbourhood

Date photo taken: 24 May 2021

During COVID and especially during the most recent lockdown, my walks have been more about the need to get out and move and less about exploration. Covering the same local streets over and over again, things get pretty familiar. Thankfully, the city is now in bloom. These days I find myself taking pictures of flowers more often than murals. A huge thank you to all of the gardeners out there who plant and tend these beauties! Lately I've been pretty much walking from lilac bush to lilac bush, pausing to inhale deeply at each one. While I have a standard route designed to provide maximum lilac exposure, I deviated on the weekend and discovered this gorgeous specimen. I looked it up and it's called a Sensation lilac. I'd say that's pretty apt. Some other things I learned are that lilacs are not native to Canada - they're from Eastern Europe and Asia originally - and are in fact related to olive trees. They can live to over 100 and come in shades of purple, pink, white and yellow.