Like an ever-increasing number of people – especially young people – I enjoy growing indoor plants.  I love the care they need and the green fullness they give in return.  Each plant enlivens a room in its own way.

Right now, I have a whole garden of indoor plants in my living, ready for sharing at The Craft Revival, the semi-annual uber craft event coming Sunday, November 24, 2019 in Thunder Bay.  I've made several dozen beautiful moss balls for sale like the ones pictures here.

During the time I was building my current – and fourth – garden, I picked up Elizabeth's Garden: Elizabeth Smart on the Art of Gardening at a book swap. "During the last years of her life, Canadian author Elizabeth Smart devoted herself to creating a magnificent garden around her cottage in Suffolk, England.  She documented her gardening in a series of eleven journals and twenty notebooks," says Google Books' thumbnail sketch of the title: The resulting book, edited by Alice Van Wart, includes excerpts from Smart's writings from 1967 to 1984, and "describes the evolution of her garden, and herself as a gardener."

This last observation – the evolution of the gardener – is the reason I love gardening memoir.  I am always curious about the motivations and passions of the people who create gardens.  These stories remind us that gardens thrive on imagination as much as they do on compost.

When another growing season draws near, I feel newly aware of promise and possibility.  Soon I'll be reaching for my spade; just now, though, I've been reaching for advice on cultivation – and on what gardening can mean in our lives.  

In her good reflective article, What gardening can do for us, Toronto-based garden writer Gayla Trail (yougrowgirl.com) declares that "Growing food transforms us into producers – something we desperately need in a passive consumer culture where we have become an audience watching life rather than producers making it. Growing food provides a connection to and an understanding of where our food comes from. It schools us in what food looks like when it comes out of the ground or off of the vine, with all of its shapes, flaws, beauty, and flavor. The work involved in growing our own food provides first-hand knowledge of the labour that goes into growing it and teaches us not to take it or the work that farmers do for granted. It transforms our expectations and turns us into educated consumers who know the value of good, well-grown produce."  

I encourage you to read Gayla's full article.  She also explores the effects of gardening on creativity, on being more aware,  on connecting to the earth, and on connecting to the child within.  These are values I seek in my gardening life too.

I do believe gardening transforms us in many ways, including into healthier people.  When I work in my garden, I feel more connected to the weather, to the shape and structure of plants, and their needs as they bloom and mature.  I come to know once again the good work of coaxing food from the ground, the reward of nurturing flowers into beautiful bloom.

I agree with Gayla when she says, "No matter what goes on in my life and no matter how off-balanced and alienated I may feel, stepping into the garden brings me back to centre, back to myself, and back to that sense of connectedness to nature, the processes of life, and the greater world beyond."

Tell me, do you dream of having a greenhouse one day?  What about a greenhouse big enough to start a nursery business?  Fifteen years ago, this was Karen Breukelman's dream.  And while the timing was a surprise, Karen put her love of gardening together with her desire for home-based employment and launched 'My Blooming Business'.

Today, country and city gardeners alike take the drive to Karen's rural greenhouse for a healthy selection of plants.  Karen was a member of the Thunder Bay & District Master Gardeners and she still shares her gardening advice with customers, often showing them how a plant blooms or matures in her own garden.  She knows her plants, especially those that are hardy for our cold climate.

With spring just around the corner, I asked Karen to talk with me about her greenhouse business and her love of gardening. 

The interview follows ...

How and when did you start your greenhouse?
A:  We started in 2001 when we purchased a greenhouse from the old experimental farm.  The opportunity to buy a 22 x 100 foot greenhouse came up by tender.  We put in a very low bid  and found out two days later that we got the greenhouse and that we would have to move it to our farm about a kilometer away.  We had to take it apart like a jigsaw puzzle, reassemble it at our location, and then decide what we would do with it.  So it wasn't a planned thing, it was something that just came along.

At the time we thought maybe we would go into the cut flower business, but the first year we opened to the public [with bedding plants], we also offered plants as a fundraiser for the Thunder Bay Christian school.  A lot of the patrons of the school are in our area.  The fundraiser let people get a taste of what we were growing at a good price.  Then from there it grew and grew. 

also What plants do you grow?
A:  I try to grow all the basics that would have been in your mother's garden and your grandmother's garden ― the geraniums, the petunias, the pansies, the marigolds.  But then I also try to grow things that are new and different and unusual.  I'm trying to be a one-stop shop where people can come and get their basics in the four-packs or full trays and they can also get things that you wouldn't find at a big commercial greenhouse.  I look far and wide for things that are unusual.  

Every year I have a few new things and I bring back the popular things from the years before. 
I try to have the old heirloom varieties ― like the nicotiana that grows six feet tall that you just can't find anymore but people remember their grandparents growing ― and I try to have something that's just coming out on the market.

I grow a lot of vegetables.  More people are interested in growing their own.  We noticed last year that the trend to growing your own vegetables is gaining.  And also canning, people are canning.  For the vegetables, I try to have short-season varieties, things that mature early, like green peppers that will turn red within our season.  Anything I grow is for our region ― Zone 2-3, 3b ― so that people will have success.

What do you find your customers are looking for?
A:  One of the things people are coming for is someone who will take the time to talk to them.  I have a lot of people who come to my greenhouse who don't have a lot of experience with gardening.  I can take the time ― if they come on a quieter day ― to help them choose plants and just help them to understand how to garden better.

What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned in running a greenhouse?
A:  That's a good question.  I think, how all-consuming it is at a certain time of year.  You almost have to brace yourself for it because once it starts, you have to be all in.  Once I start the greenhouse at the beginning of April, it's morning to night that you are thinking about it.  Because we are a family-run business, it's me, my husband Gerald, and our daughter who helps when she can, when she's not in school.  I don't have back up and once I start I can't leave the property for any length of time.  That was what surprised me when we first started.  But it's exciting, it's invigorating, it's lovely work. 

Do you have time to grow a garden for yourself?  What do you have here on the property?
A:  Last year, because it was our transition year and we were moving [from the dairy farm which was sold to a new property and new house], I didn't have any flowerbeds.  I missed it so much!  We didn't even have grass.  I realized how much I missed puttering in the garden.  So at the end of the summer we put in sod and I outlined my beds. 

There is a big oval in front of the house.  I want masses of plants there, for impact.  I want you to be a hundred feet away and say, 'Wow, what's going on over there?'  I'm going for impact from a distance ― that is my plan.  At the end of the house we put in a large perennial bed that's about 9 or 10 feet deep and about 28 feet long.  I haven't started working on that one at all.  I am very excited for this year. 

We are also going to put in a vegetable garden.  I didn't have a vegetable garden last year.  Again, I missed it so much.  You don't even realize how much you appreciate being able to walk out the door and get some lettuce or herbs, right?  It's just so simple. 

When you imagine your garden in the future – say, in five years’ time – what do you envision?
A:  I think, established perennials beds, but still playing with annuals, because I have so many choices in annuals with the greenhouse and lots of fun things that I get to try.  In my flowerbeds I like to try out new plants and see how they do.  I like to test out different things and just play.  The annuals give me that opportunity to mix it up and change it every year.

What kind of garden appeals to you?
A:  I like a crowded garden.  I like a flowerbed that the plants are close enough that you don't see the dirt.  I guess a cottage garden style.  Mixed with stepping stones and old pieces of wood, things you've collected over the years, just things that make it personal.  I like to throw interesting things in that catch you off guard ― little surprises.  But I'm going to have to work on that here yet, and figure out what my surprises will be!