Welcome

If you love gardening - or want to learn more about Canada's top hobby - join us at the Nobleton & King City Horticultural Society.

Monthly meetings are held on the fourth Monday of the month at 8 pm. at the Nobleton Community Hall (9 Old King Road, just opposite the Feed Store). They feature informative speakers, beautiful flower shows and plenty of friendly conversation. Guests are always welcome

Annual membership is $15.00, which includes meetings and show book. There is a $3.00 fee for non-members at the monthly meetings.

For information contact Tina Stone or Barb Downey

In The News

The Nobleton and King City Horticultural Society is hosting its annual Garden Tour July 12, from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.

This is a rare opportunity to visit a good variety of local gardens, large and small, that are only open to the public for this occasion. The $10-pervisitor tickets, that include maps showing the locations of the tour gardens, are available in advance at the Pharmasave Pharmacy in the Nobleton Plaza on the east side of Highway 27, a few blocks north of King Road, and at Still Gorgeous in the first block north of the King on the west side of Highway 27, both in Nobleton, and in King City at Crawford Wells gift store near the intersection of King Road and Keele Street, and The Black Forest Garden Centre on Keele, just south of Lloydtown/Aurora Road. Tickets may also be bought at any of the gardens on the tour. Please keep your ticket with you, as it must be shown at each garden visited. If you don't plan to buy a ticket because you only want to visit one or two gardens, there will be a charge of $2 per garden.

"The naughty perennial of Shady Lane has hit our town like a bomb. The back-fence garden gossip ain't been this good since Mabel's rose won over Tom's . . ."

The naughty plant in question is goutweed, sometimes called bishop's weed (aegopodium podagraria, a Latinized name from the Greek "aix," for goat, "podin," for little foot and "podagraria," for gout) that not only thrives on shady lanes but in any shady place and readily adapts to growing in sunny areas if the soil is even slightly damp. The most common cultivar in our area has the Latin word "variegatum" added to this name, meaning in botanical terms two or more shades or colours, and while it looks quite attractive, it is extremely invasive and if left unchecked will rapidly take over lawn, garden and all. This variegated plant, that grows around one foot high, is easily recognized by its rich green three sectioned toothed leaves edged in cream-white and its sparse Queen Anne's lace-like flowers (they're related). Common goutweed's leaves are all green.

Aegopodium, a member of the parsley family (umbelliferae) native to southern Europe and Asia, was introduced into Britain and France by the Romans as an herb to use in cooking. A tea made from it was used to treat insect bites and stings, as well as minor burns and scratches. In early mediaeval times, St. Gerard, bishop of Toul in France, is said to have used aegopodium to treat gout, thus giving it its two best-known common names. Soon, however, it escaped the herb garden and naturalized throughout the countryside, crowding out native plants. It was brought to the temperate parts of the Americas and Australia by European colonists as a medicinal and pot herb and also as an ornamental, but it soon out grew its allotted space and escaping over the garden wall spread along river banks, took over wastelands and the lands at the edge of forests once again over growing and killing native plants. Here and in Australia it has no natural enemies to keep it in check.

By the by, herb gerard, jumpabout, goat's foot, dog elder, farmer's plague, ground ash and English masterwort are a few of the more than 20 common names for aegopodium podagraria.

"Our town was peaceful and quiet before it arrived on the scene. Now goutweed that spreads like a riot is disturbin' the suburban routine . . ." and no wonder, as it spreads with disturbing speed by underground stems called stolons (from the Latin word for runners) that can penetrate even heavy clay. American horticulturist Lynne Bittner got her goutweed as a tiny stowaway in a root of bee balm (monarda/bergamot) she brought home from a plant exchange. She is still battling this aggressive spreader on her suburban property, calling it the scourge of the garden.

Some gardeners plant the variegatum cultivar because its attractive foliage brightens up full shade areas and it will quickly cover a place such as a bank where nothing else will grow. It is also planted between the foundation of a house and a bordering solid walkway or in concrete or thick vinyl containers partly sunk into the ground. Over the years walkways and containers in our climate tend to crack, split or crumble and goutweed is always probing its boundaries and "won't ever be nice as can be."

Once established this intruder is extremely difficult, if not impossible to get rid of. Gardeners who attempt to pull or dig it out will tell you that the tiniest piece of stolon or root left in the ground will soon sprout. I know this from bitter experience with a planting of goutweed. I foolishly made this mistake in my former Nobleton area garden. Desperate Lynne Bittner says the idea of bulldozing her entire garden crossed her mind more than once.

We certainly need to think twice before planting this "naughty perennial, for sale in garden centres as a 'no care' ground cover, on our shady lanes and getting the whole neighbourhood in a whirl." (Apologies to the Ames Brothers and The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane).

Originally published in the King Township Sentinel on June 24, 2009
by John Arnott