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Helen Battersby

@gardenfix.bsky.social
426 followers 200 following 252 posts

Garden writer, speaker, traveller, photographer; co-creator of the award-winning, new Canada Gardener's Journal. Not always in that order. Toronto, Canada. She/Her

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Reposted by Helen Battersby
Titania @titaniasrealm.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
The magical mice of Lily Seika Jones
Four watercolour illustrations of mice in cloaks, pointy hats and with walking sticks and wizard's staves.
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Reposted by Helen Battersby
womensartbluesky.bsky.social @womensartbluesky.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Sandra Victorino, Native American ceramic artist of the Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico #WomensArt
Four ceramic vases grouped in different shapes all with individual black and white geometric patterns
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Reposted by Helen Battersby
Charlie Ludwig @chuck4242.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
A Painted Lady butterfly on a purple coneflower for #StunDay! #Insects #Macro #Butterflies #Nature #Wildlife #WildlifePhotography #MacroPhotography #Photos #Photo #ECK
A Painted Lady butterfly in profile on a purple coneflower
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
The new, Canada-wide version of our long-running garden diary has just earned a Silver Laurel in the GardenComm media awards! #canadagardens #gardening Get yours here: www.foodgardenlife.com/gardening-bo...
GardenComm Silver Laurel logo
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Bloomscrolling with two pieces by my talented mother (flower) and father (vase), both of whom died much too young. These were drawn over 30 years ago. #bloomscrolling #flowersonfriday #canadagardens #art #gardening
Watercolour painting of a pink flower. Abstract black-and-white sketch of a flower in a vase.
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
Toronto gardeners, take note! #canadagardens #torontogardens
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
#canadagardens
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
A tiny new butterfly visiting a neighbour’s garden, the Brown Argus (Aricia agestis). It wouldn’t flash me the other side of its wing, but these were lovely enough. That’s a perennial sweet pea, pretty in pink. 🌱 #gardensky #canadagardens #torontogardens #butterfly
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
Great tips from Nigel Dunnett on using flower form in planting design. Many were mentioned in the presentation I wrote a while back on designing with see-thru plants, which is reassuring. apple.news/AYTCMnUNyTEO... #gardening #gardensky 🌱 #plantingdesign #flowersonfriday
apple.news
Nigel Dunnett’s top tips on using flower form, not colour, when creating dynamic planting designs — Gardens Illustrated
In planting design, we often consider colour, says Nigel Dunnett, but the form of flowers can be just as important
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
Finally, I began to see the potential for an alphabet. Here’s an accidental F, L, X. All when I should have been helping do dishes. #artmaking #collage #natureisbeautiful
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
Another thought as I played with these materials: how many elements can you remove before the design falls apart? #artmaking #lessonslearnedfromdesigners #collage #natureisbeautiful
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
On my earlier nature collage theme, it’s fun to compare right-side-up and up-side-down. Which do you prefer, and which do you think is which, #1 or #2? #artmaking #collage #natureisbeautiful
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
Some well-deserved hate for landscape cloth from @jessicadamiano.bsky.social — every new gardener (and even some old-timers) should take note. apple.news/AcZY0D6tlTZi...
apple.news
Why landscape fabric is often a bad idea for your garden — The Canadian Press
Landscape fabric may sound like a neat, tidy and easy solution
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
Ephemeral art using gifts from nature. Here today, scattered tomorrow. #canadagardens #canadacamps #camping #natureisbeautiful
Ephemeral collage made of small campground finds, including lichens, mosses, dried cedar scales, cones, bark, and a discarded snail shell. All arranged on a picnic table bench.
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 13/06/2025
Because I can never get enough of this poppy. ‘Beauty of Livermere.’ #bloomscrolling #canadagardens #torontogardens #gardensky #gardens 🌱 #poppylove #flowersonfriday #photography #nofilter #iphonephotography
Deep red poppy when backlit creates a stained-glass effect.
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
The arrival of the ‘Beauty of Livermere’ poppies is always a thrill. So red! So crinkly! So look-at-me-everybody! #bloomscrolling #canadagardens #torontogardens #gardensky 🌱 #messygardens #photographingflowers #nofilter
This is the out-of-the-iphone-camera red, red, red of the ‘Beauty of Livermere’ oriental poppy. I wait for its brief yet happy-making appearance every year. The crinkled tissue-papery petals of the freshly opened flower and the inky black markings and purpley stamens just add to my joy. My growing patch lost two buds to (probably) marauding squirrels climbing the obelisk placed to keep the stems upright. This spring in Toronto has been particularly wet, so those stems are taller than usual. Naturally, the flowers lean into the sun, so my neighbour enjoys the best view. That red certainly draws the eye in my messy front garden.
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
This old dog in Toronto is trying the new trick of growing figs in a cold climate. All thanks to the guidance of Steve Biggs, who literally wrote the book on it! On lemons and (soon) olives, too. Visit: foodgardenlife.com #canadagardens #gardensky 🌱 #edibleplants #growingfruit
Saplings of two of Steve’s favourite figs: ‘Niagara Black’, a purple fig, and ‘Dalmatie’, a green one. These are off-shoots from Steve’s own trees. I’m gardening in Canadian Zone 6b (USDA Zone 5b-ish). He over-winters some in a cool indoor space, and some lie down under straw bales. Fingers crossed for me!Steve Biggs in his garden with s few of his lemon trees. The front cover of Steve’s award-winning book, Grow Figs Where You Think You Can’t. Buy it from his website foodgardenlife.com
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Reposted by Helen Battersby
Cheryl in Nova Scotia 🇨🇦🍁🍁 @minibubbly.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
A seed company in the Sudbury, Ont., community of Lively is helping with Canada's national re-greening efforts by working to expand national seed production. Northern Wildflowers produces flower, grass, shrub, and tree seeds for home gardening #Ontario #Canada www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
cbc.ca
Sudbury, Ont., seed producer helping expand national seed production through new partnership | CBC News
Northern Wildflowers in the Sudbury, Ont., community of Lively is helping with Canada's national re-greening efforts by working to expand national seed production. The company is one of 13 recipients ...
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
My first-ever sighting of a double redbud, possibly Cercis canadensis ‘Pink Pom Poms.’ Very showy! But I wonder how it is as a nectar source. Opinions? #bloomscrolling #nativars #gardensky 🌱 #canadagardens #torontogardens #onmywalktoday #floweringtrees
Closeup of the small, multipetalled flowers of this Eastern redbud nativar. Redbud flowers emerge before the foliage. But when the heart-shaped leaves do begin to come out, as here, they make a handsome contrast.
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 27/05/2025
The wabi-sabi beauty of a frizzled tulip. #bloomscrolling #canadagardens #torontogardens #springgarden #bulbs #tulips #photography #photographingflowers
An aging purple tulip with blue and white markings, yellow  stamens and an acid-green pistil. Sometimes I love the look of a tulip near the end of its flowering period, like this one. The petals take on fascinating sculptural shapes.
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
When squirrels garden. Yes, they dig up your newly planted bulbs and plant plugs and snap heads off tulips. But sometimes they bring you a gift from someone else’s garden. And this mystery fringed tulip matches my colour scheme perfectly. 😇 #bloomscrolling #gardensky 🌱 #canadagardens #springgarden
Red tulip with spiky yellow fringes around the petal edges.
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
Until the Norway maple street trees leaf out, my dry-shade front garden is a dry, sunny garden. Perfect for spring bulbs. #canadagardens #gardening 🌱 #gardensky #springgarden #bloomscrolling #flowersonfriday
Peach, yellow, and bicoloured red-yellow tulips. I keep to one colour palette, so that any tulips surviving from previous years (like the parrot tulip near the front here) coordinates perfectly. Purple flowers and foliage are complementary accents. ‘Daydream’ tulips I posted on earlier have now aged to almost completely orangey red with a yellow and black eye. View from my bedroom window shows tulips in situ, surrounding a mass of alliums in bud. Yes, I’ll regret all that soon-to-be yellowing foliage right up front as it ripens. But for now I’m a happy gardener with a conveniently short memory. Daffodils with a peachy split trumpet (name forgotten at the moment) chosen to match the ‘Orange Queen’ epimediums, with with cool-toned hyacinths to perfume the approach to our front door.
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
Sunset on storm clouds, filtered through our slightly dirty car window. #clouds #cloudappreciationsociety #photography #cloudsky #sunset
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
An aide memoire for gardeners: when adding a new plant, photograph the tag (both sides, if appropriate) with a clue to the location. The date will likely be added, especially if a phone camera. Instant, easy record-keeping. #gardening 🌱 #gardensky #canadagardens #torontogardens #gardentips
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 04/05/2025
Tulipa ‘Daydream’ gradually changes, becoming more and more orange as it ages. But not every one at the same time. #bloomscrolling #canadagardens #torontogardens #gardening 🌱 #gardensky #springgarden #springbulbs #tulips
‘Daydream’ tulip as it first appears, mostly yellow petals lightly edged in reddish orangeThe orange edges widen and deepen in colour after a day or twoA few days more and the petals appear mostly a deep orange, with soft stripes of yellow in the centre and at the base of each petal A patch of ‘Daydream’ planted at the same time but showing several different stages of colour
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Reposted by Helen Battersby
womensartbluesky.bsky.social @womensartbluesky.bsky.social · 04/05/2025
Contemporary printmaker Julia Lucey often employs aquatint etchings, printing them, cutting out elements by hand, and collaging them, layer upon layer #WomrnsArt
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
It’s cherry blossom time! No crowds. I only needed to keep my eyes open in my neighborhood to be awed by this beauty. #bloomscrolling #canadagardens #gardening 🌱 #gardensky #photography #cherryblossoms #torontogardens
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
So much depends on a white tulip. On the wane but lit by sunlight, it almost looks like an etching. #bloomscrolling #canadagardens #gardening #gardensky 🌱 #flowersinavase #photographingflowers #photography #blackandwhitephotography
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Reposted by Helen Battersby
womensartbluesky.bsky.social @womensartbluesky.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
'Reeds all about it' machine embroidery by UK textile artist Rachel Wright #womensart
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Reposted by Helen Battersby
Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
My latest @newscientist.com cartoon
Title:
SOME GRAMMATICAL VOICES FOR USE IN SCIENTIFIC WRITING

ACTIVE VOICE
e.g.
Our team collected samples and then we tested them.

CLICKBAIT VOICE
e.g.
We collected some samples...
You won't believe what happened next!

PASSIVE VOICE
e.g.
Samples were collected and tested.

HAIKU VOICE
e.g.
Quiet science lab.
Workers arrive with samples.
The testing begins.

PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE VOICE
e.g. We did all the collecting and testing.
No need to thank us.
Just doing our job.

CONSPIRACY VOICE
e.g.
Mysterious "Samples" were harvested and covertly "tested" by so-called scientists.
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Canadian friends: Vote as if your country depended on it. #canada #federalelection2025 #vote
Sign says, “Elections Canada. Vote.” People are lined up to do so.
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 26/04/2025
Not just for journalists. HT to Bob Ramsay of Ramsay Writes, who’s not yet on BlueSky. #factchecking #readingthenews mediablog.prnewswire.com/2025/03/26/v...
mediablog.prnewswire.com
20 Helpful Verification Tools for Journalists | Beyond Bylines
As we near April Fool’s Day and its potential wave of misleading content, we're rounding up a few verification tools that journalists should bookmark.
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
You still have time to get your 2025 Gardener's Journal – AND enjoy our $22 all-in Earth Week Special! (Now till April 27, Canadian orders only) #gardening #canadagardens #gardensky #gardendiary #gardenjournalling 🌱 #torontogardens #ontariogardens gardenjournals.ca
gardenjournals.ca
Toronto & Golden Horseshoe Gardener's Journal – Annual Garden Diary and Source List
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 19/04/2025
Thrilled to have bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) clumping up so sweetly in my native plant garden. #canadagardens #gardensky 🌱 #gardening #northamericannativeplants #inmygardentoday #springflowers #springephemerals
The single white flowers and bright yellow stamens of bloodroot, an early-spring ephemeral native to Canada. Closeup of the flowers and foliage.
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
A handful of dollar-store marbles add just enough lift so tulips can fan out, not scrunch together, in this narrow glass vase. Must get more! #canadagardens #flowersinavase #bloomscrolling 🌱 #gardensky #gardening #torontogardens #tuliptime
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 13/04/2025
Self-sown hellebore seedling blooms for 1st time, and I’m delighted to see it’s…delightful. Bright white with faint red star, prominent stamens and nectaries; as a bonus, it’s somewhat upward facing. #bloomscrolling #canadagardens #gardening #gardensky 🌱 #selfseedingperennials
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 11/04/2025
First blooms of the Helleborus ‘Sandy Shores’ I planted last year live up to their name. Lovely! #canadagardens #gardensky #gardening 🌱 #bloomscrolling #flowersonfriday #fridayflowers #perennials #springgarden #torontogardens
Helleborus ‘Sandy Shores’ is a single hellebore (so has nectaries for early-foraging pollinators). Colour is a creamy pale yellow with purple-red shading and a deep red-purple star around yellow stamens. The outside of the tepals is a rosy red, shaded with creamy yellow.
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
Sharing this from IG. Would love to see you there if you live near Creemore, Ontario. #canadagardens #ontariogardens #gardening 🌱 #gardensky #gardentalks #ediblegardens
Garden presentation by Helen Battersby on April 16, 2025 at 7 pm. Station on the Green, Creemore, Ontario, Canada. Designing with Edible Plants for ornamental and edible gardens.
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
‘Joseph’s Coat’ amaranth is one of the plants in my Designing with Edible Plants presentation. It’s about edible ornamentals and ornamental edibles — and how to use them to make your garden both beautiful and bountiful. 🌱 #gardensky #canadagardens #kitchengardens #flowergardens #gardendesign
Red, yellow, and green variegated foliage rosette closeup of the edible as well as decorative annual amaranth called ‘Joseph’s Coat.’
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
Four of my botanically themed favourites in the Competitors Exhibit at the 2025 Spring One-of-a-Kind Show in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Details in Alt. 🌱 #gardensky #canadagardens #oneofakindshow #toronto #spring #artisans oneofakindshow.com/home/
Carved wave-form light depicts the ripples and movement of water in natural wood, from Jorge Izaza Wood Art and Lamps at the 2025 Spring One-of-a-Kind Show in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Shown horizontally on a tabletop, it might also work as a wall sconce. An assortment of bottled honeys from Heritage Bee Co. at the 2025 Spring One-of-a-Kind Show in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Besides typical wildflower honey, there’s a charcuterie collection and a tempting fig and orange creamed honey. Fooling the eye with felt versions of camembert cheese, cherry tomates, olives, and crackers. From Akuku at the 2025 Spring One-of-a-Kind Show in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Ceramic vase by Mac Ceramics shows aquatic wildlife on three levels. A blue-and-white landscape with evergreens and bald eagle above. A pastel-coloured water world of algae and shellfish below. At the base, a rich bed of mud. At the 2025 Spring One-of-a-Kind Show in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
“Beach Please” is the theme for the Competitor’s Exhibit at Toronto’s 2025 Spring One-of-a-Kind Show. A few botanically inspired highlights in next post. 🌱 #gardensky #toronto #canadagardens #oneofakindshow oneofakindshow.com/home/
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Reposted by Helen Battersby
Lost @lostinthought17.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
Gorgeous :)
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Reposted by Helen Battersby
Stacie Smith (She/Her) 🇨🇦 🏒 🧠 ⚾️ @stacesmith94.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
Why Canada must treat its food system as a matter of national defence
theconversation.com
Why Canada must treat its food system as a matter of national defence
Faced with both a trade war and annexation threats, Canada must confront whether its domestic food systems can feed its population in a crisis.
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
Canadian Tulip Festival, a tulip extravaganza every May in Ottawa. tulipfestival.ca #canadagardens #tuliptuesday 🌱 #gardensky #gardening #spring #gardentravel #photography #photographingflowers
White lily-shaped tulips with pink stripes in foreground with pink and deep red peony-shaped tulips in background. Each May, Canada’s capital city benefits from the gratitude of the Netherlands (in the form of a festival’s worth of bulbs) for offering the Dutch royal family safe harbour during WW2’s period of occupation by the Nazis. White, orange, magenta, and deep purple tulips combine like a bold, abstract, pointillist painting. Yellow tulips blushing red at the petal tips brighten this bed across the Rideau River from Canada’s House of Parliament. While the main festivities happen elsewhere in town, the whole city participates in this spring event. Sunshine illuminates this brilliant bed of pink, orange, purple and red tulips in Commissioners Park, which is festival central. 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of Dutch liberation.
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
Me, reading the news. (P.S. Oslo’s excellent Munch Museum is much more than The Scream. I particularly loved his massive The Researchers, depicting children exploring the world. Last image is his self portrait.) #art #museums #architecture #norway #angst #artists #currentevents
A black and white print of Edvard Munch’s iconic The Scream. The museum has three versions of this. To protect the images from damaging exposure to light, each is on display for only a few minutes through windows that open and close in rotation in the same darkened room. The innovative bent tower of the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway. Inside, it displays the great variety of his paintings and printmaking (works as well as process) an explores the thinking of the man behind The Scream. The largest of several immense canvases by Munch, The Researchers shows naked children on a beach engaged in close study of nature. There’s nothing lurid about their state of undress. Anchoring the centre of the scene, a fully dressed woman breastfeeds a baby. Her face looks out at the viewer. It’s an optimistic contrast to The Scream. In contrast to the angsty mood of his most famous artwork, Munch’s full-length self portait shows an ordinary-looking young man wearing a frock coat and holding paint brushes.
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
March 17th: a good day to share this textured green-on-green from Reford Gardens, Quebec. I had to crouch to intensify the verticals of horsetail and contrasting uprights in darker green. It to change the camera’s perspective. 🌱 #gardensky #canadagardens #gardentravel #photography #stpaddysday
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 15/03/2025
If that’s not why they call them snowdrops, it should be. Mine are later than usual this year. But they were waiting patiently for their cue in the greenroom under a heap of late snow. 🌱 #canadagardens #gardening #gardensky #springflowers #galanthophile #torontogardens #bloomscrolling
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Helen Battersby @gardenfix.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
If you heard Paul Zammit recommend it on CBC Radio, you’ll be pleased to know we still have copies. Learn more and order your 2025 Gardener’s Journal at gardenjournals.ca #canadagardens #ontariogardens #gardening #gardensky 🌱
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Reposted by Helen Battersby
Helen Warlow @hippychick.bsky.social · 09/03/2025
David Inshaw. This is amazing. one of our finest artists working today.
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