Every Year is Better than the Year Before ...

… and 2025 was no exception. Our team of Gardeners increased by only one over 2024 but it ran like a well oiled machine and the number of active gardening volunteer hours increased by 200 over 2024 to an amazing total of 950 hours. That is the Full time equivalent of one very experienced gardener for six months, which is huge! And it showed.

We actually managed to get an early start and on our first workday (April 22nd) found our early bloomers already in action. Hellebores are a very dependable addition to our northern gardens.

May is a month when Mother Nature has her foot on the gas. It begins with green grass and daffodils and a lot of barren looking trees and shrubs.

but a few short weeks later, the Garden is green and pink with flowering crabapples and the rock garden is the star of the show.

It is a very labour intensive month, getting the beds cleaned up and edged before the weeds take over but the Tower Hill Gardeners are happy to back where we belong- working together.

The end of May ushers in Lilac season, which lasts a whole month. Our Lilac Walk is now well established and the Garden has an impressive collection of lilacs suited to our climate. There is a wide variety of flowers and the air is filled with fragrance on warm days. “Beauty of Moscow” is a French Hybrid lilac you don’t see in many home gardens.

You can see photos of all the lilacs in the collection by visiting our website any time of year.

June is just as busy as May. The grass and perennials (and weeds) grow like crazy and it is planting season. The Town of Parry Sound provides a generous number of annual flowers every year (after all, the general public remembers Tower Hill as a garden filled with flowers) and it is not a good idea to get them in the ground before early June around here.

It is a huge job and has to be done when the plants arrive whether it is a regular workday or not. So we gather up the troops, get them planted, fertilized and watered.

Another job that has to be done regardless of the weather when it is scheduled is cleaning out the pond. It is a day long collaborative effort between Parks & Rec staff and Tower Hill Gardeners. In 2024 it hailed but in 2025 it only rained!

We do our best to not suck up goldfish and in a good news, bad news scenario, there were not too many to worry about. A snapping turtle had found its way into the pond (prankster?) and he/she had almost entirely decimated the population. The turtle was relocated and the repopulation efforts have begun.

By midafternoon the cleanup was done and refilling begun. By evening, the pond was almost topped up and the water crystal clear.. In another good news/bad news scenario, the water stayed reasonably clear all summer due to the reduced fish population.

By the end of the month we had our spring perennial plant and shrub order delivered and planted and were able to focus on the regular stuff.

Like finding a home in the woods for our collection of gnomes.

It was a fabulous summer. Week in and week out we had almost a dozen garden volunteers and we were able to move a couple of long term projects forward, like the Children’s Garden. We have noticed that families who visit stay much longer now that there is a place for exploring. The Gnomes were a big hit and we have more plans for the Enchanted Forest and Hawthorne Hollow.

Have a closer look at the Children’s Garden by clicking here .

We had some unexpected things happen this summer; some good, some not.

First the good. We have had beautiful foxglove plants appear that we didn’t plant. They are at the edge of the woods close to the historic lower George Street entrance. not far from Mr. Googley Eyes. It is an area that has been untended for some time.

Of course we are nurturing them. They have been appearing over the last few years and their origin is a mystery. We came across this old photo one day.

It’s hard to tell if those upright pink flowers are foxgloves or not, but ours are growing not so far from the back side of the pond.

Another nice surprise was a visit from our MP Scott Aitchison. He’s a home gardener and wanted to commend us for our contribution. He promised to return in his work clothes.

We rarely experience vandalism but there were two curious incidents during the summer that left us shaking our heads. One July morning we noticed that this symmetrically designed border along the path up to the Tower was missing a very large Hydrangea. There was no sign of shovelling or dragging a large shrub down the path. We figure someone backed a truck up to it and yanked it out. It is highly unlikely that the plant survived.

Later in the summer, someone decided they should educate us on the invasive nature of Periwinkle and the damage it can do when planted close to a natural area. We have no idea how many decades ago it was planted at Tower Hill but it has invaded most of the woods surrounding the Garden. We often talk to visitors about the long term implications of using invasive plants and knew that eradicating it was not going to be possible, so decided to use the name as a teaching point.

They defaced both of our signs, but we took it in stride and painted them. Now we wonder if we need to install a sign that says, “Yes, we know periwinkle is invasive but we didn’t plant it nor let it discourage us from trying to restore the woods and make them a wonderful place for children to explore nature”

Another project we made a lot of headway on is the Habitat Garden. We received a grant from TD Friends of the Environment Foundation in 2016 to create a native plant demonstration garden in the somewhat treed area directly across from the Museum entrance. The mostly shady spot has a flat grassy area perfect for gatherings. We used it for a strawberry social with the loan of the Rotary tent when we held a few Garden Days events.

There are always picnic tables there and the trash can is usually overflowing with take out containers so we decided to enhance the area.

We rearranged the furniture and enlarged the planting beds to create a more enclosed and welcoming space for picnics and gatherings that is more like a home or cottage garden typical of our natural setting.

We are pretty pleased with our accomplishment and are looking forward to having our coffee breaks there … if our leader would only let us have one! Nadine from the Museum does bring us freezies on hot days, though!

It was a gorgeous fall and before long the leaves changed colour and started to fall. We gathered up the gnomes from the woods and put them away along with the peacocks, poppies and spinning sprinkler for the winter.

We met one last time in late November to put up lights and decorations and sent Santa down to Hawthorne Hollow to delight whomever might come across him before winter (which began a couple of days later and just won’t let go).

We can hardly wait to get started and have lots of plans for 2026!