My neighbour has created a bee and butterfly garden, and it’s a lovely sight. She has terrible soil, we all do in our area, our homes are built on the old smelter grounds and as the story goes, the former toxic site was capped with clay and our small strata development was built atop the clay. I can attest to the clay!

But Sue has done magical things with her hard dried garden. A few years ago, she researched and built a ‘lasagna’ garden in front of her house. She piled layers of newspapers, soil, cardboard and compost on the unforgiving ground and now has a spectacular garden with Aubretia spilling over the rocks, small shrubs and Rhododendrons, spring bulbs and Euphorbia providing bloom all year round.

However, there was a strip of grass along her drive that never grew properly. She reseeded, fertilized, watered and yet the strange brown patches remained. One day she dug it up and announced she was creating a bee and butterfly garden. A pollinator garden with a mix of cat nip, California poppies, red poppies and Foxglove that maybe drifted over from my garden, blue Lupins, orange Wallflowers; a wild cacophony of colour, all in the sun and buzzing with bees.

My garden is across the road from Sue’s and is mostly in shade from the Katsura tree and the towering black bamboo. I also have a mix of perennials, shade loving plants such as Lady’s Mantel, Leopards’ Bane, Rose Campion, Foxglove, Japanese Windflowers, and tucked among the ferns I have water dishes for the snakes (yes, I like snakes), and fat bumblebees. My garden is not as structured as Sue’s, it’s even slatternly, but has its own charm. The Euphorbia wandered over from her garden and found niches to flourish and the poppies tossed their seed with wild abandon.

Its not everybody’s cup of tea, however we have two artists and one master gardener who live in our cluster of homes, and they love our gardening style. In fact, one artist, Beckie, gave me a painting she had done of my garden because it gave her such joy every time she walked by.

And what has all this got to do with “getting in shape”? Last month I told you I had joined a Choose to Move program via Zoom put on by Island Health and I would give you a progress report. I had ambitious exercise plans but then I had hand surgery, so no rowing machine or floor yoga, and a small health blip, so no hill climbing, however I could garden, and gardening counts for exercise! Yeah! To be honest I would rather be weeding and planting and designing hidden vignettes for cats to lounge than sweating over a hard metal exercise machine.

So, join me and don your garden gloves and hats and get down and dirty and move! It’s a win, win, all the way!

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~ Island Crone by Liz Maxwell Forbes