Gardening Naturally

By Laurie Perron and Sarah Quesnel-Langlois

Ecological gardening with ease and simplicity.

Gardening Naturally offers a wealth of information and practical advice for growing indoor and outdoor plants based on sustainability, a rejection of artificial chemicals, and respect for biodiversity and the natural world. From advice on planning your garden and dealing with disease, insects, and the arrival of cold weather, to tips for starting your own compost, repotting effectively, and choosing which local and native flowers to best attract pollinators, Gardening Naturally will interest anyone who wants to add flowers, edibles, and greenery to their daily life, no matter the size of their balcony or the extent of their garden.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ambrosia
• Release date: Mar 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781487010256

Laurie Perron

LAURIE PERRON worked as a horticulturalist and landscape architect for fifteen years before realizing her dream of opening Jungle Fleur, an online boutique flower shop that sells seasonal blooms that she grows in her mother’s garden.

Book preview

Gardening Naturally by Laurie Perron and Sarah Quesnel-Langlois. A photograph shows a first-person view looking down at a hand with light skin tone holding small, colourful wildflowers and berries, with leafy twigs, soil, and roots extending off the tip of the palm and down the wrist. Below is a blurry view of garden soil.TITLE PAGE: Gardening Naturally by Laurie Perron and Sara Quesnel.. Published by House of Anansi.This image is split in two. Leafy green plants are on the floor, hanging from the ceiling, and placed on a dark wood desk in front of a white wall in a room. The plants on the floor are broad and large. Rows of them cover the floor and the bottom portion of the wall. Stacks of terracotta pots are between them. The desk along the wall is full of small terracotta pots with small plants. The hanging plants are in macrame holders. To the left are large, tall plants that obscure the wall.This image is a continuation of the last. More stacks of small terracotta pots are behind the small potted plants. A pink leather ottoman in front of the desk has a yellow knit blanket folded on top with a potted plant placed on the blanket. A light wood side table beside the ottoman is covered in plants in small and medium pots. Leafy plants are on the ground around the side table. Another wood desk behind the side table, along the wall, is covered with plants and pots. Two small botanical paintings are on the wall above. Four small plants hang from macrame holders above the desk.

Laurie Perron

With a degree in horticulture and landscape gardening, I’ve been working in the botanical field since 2004. After numerous experiences, I founded Jungle Fleur in 2014. This gave me a balance between my computer mouse and my shovel, and allowed me to grow and harvest over the seasons.

Sarah Quesnel-­Langlois

I am an artisan and photographer with an enthusiasm for botany. Since 2018, I have collaborated on a variety of projects with Jungle Fleur as a horticulturalist and stylist, thus combining my greatest passions in life.

A cultivated row of flower bushes is in front of a coniferous hedge many feet tall.Laurie and Sarah are between the rows of flower bushes. They both have light skin tone, long brown hair, and wear wide-brimmed straw hats. They are in different rows, bent over picking flowers, with bunches of flowers in their hands. Colourful flowers are amongst the rows. The tall coniferous hedge continues behind them, and the leafy branches of deciduous trees hang into view in front of them.

Our vision

With Gardening Naturally, our aims are to help you discover the world of plants from an ecological point of view and to teach you to garden simply and according to your needs and your space.

Gardening is a positive action we can take for the planet and its inhabitants. Growing plants that are natural to our geographical area and consuming locally grown food help reduce our ecological footprint. And plants are crucial to our existence: They regulate the world’s temperature; provide oxygen; and feed and protect humans, animals, and insects. Considered from this perspective, every bit of gardening helps — whether it’s growing a few herbs on a balcony, cultivating a large edible garden to feed yourself over the summer, planting a tree, or simply learning more about the subject.

This book is an invitation to rethink how we grow gardens, vegetable beds, and houseplants. It is based on the principle of natural gardening without the use of chemicals — something that is very much at the heart of our values. It is in this spirit that we offer our advice and recommendations, which we have tried to keep both simple and accessible.

We hope this book will not only help fill your everyday life with blooms, but also encourage you to eat more pesticide-free produce and green your living areas. But more than that, we hope we will awaken your gardener’s soul and make you want to plunge your hands into the earth. Into healthy earth.

Our story

As partners in Jungle Fleur, we are both passionate about botany, from photosynthesis to harvest. We promote a different and contemporary approach to horticulture, with a particular bias toward the ethical production of local flowers.

The idea for Jungle Fleur germinated back in 2014, in the form of a small shop in Montreal’s Hochelaga-Maisonneuve neighbourhood. Now converted into an online store, Jungle Fleur offers seasonal flowers (fresh and dried), leafy plants, related products, and workshops. We create simple, organic bouquets in harmony with our environmental and aesthetic values.

Our seasonal flowers are grown in a small garden not far from our shop in Montreal. This proximity gives us more control over how we grow, eliminates the use of chemical products and preservatives, reduces transport-related pollution, and avoids the use of plastic packaging. We also follow ecological practices, such as making our own compost, collecting rainwater, and using environmentally friendly fertilizers. Above all, gardening locally allows us to devote ourselves fully to what we love most: having our hands in the soil, watching our garden change, and being in awe of the diversity of nature.

Laurie and Sarah

Botany, that complex science that illuminates the lives of plants and flowers, has been growing in popularity over the last few years. This is essential to us, because a room without plants, a parking lot without trees, or a new urban development without greenery are all lifeless. But vegetation is not just aesthetic; it’s also incredibly useful.

We all need to be close to nature, to surround ourselves with greenery and natural spaces to promote well-being. Plants have the power to reawaken childhood memories, bring joy, soothe, fascinate, and inspire. With climate change, threats to biodiversity,✽ and the increase in endangered species, this growing interest in botany is very timely.

If you aren’t already convinced that we all need to take care of our environment, the pages that follow will teach you about plant classification and the biology of plants so you can better understand and cherish them.

A crash

course in botany

A first-person view shows a hand with light skin tone holding a thin wood stake. The bottom half of the stake is brown and wet with soil. On the clean top half is “Dahlia” written in permanent marker.

Nomenclature

and classification

The naturalist Carl Linnaeus was the first person to use science to classify nature. In his 1735 work Systema Naturae, he proposed the binomial system: two names to be used to facilitate the identification of plants across the globe. These were also classified, hierarchized into kingdom, division, class, order, family, and genus.

Ever since that time, scientists and botanists worldwide have used the system outlined in this monumental work. As this science is constantly evolving, plant names sometimes change following new discoveries. The most advanced technology allows for more in-depth research into plant DNA, and botanists can now study plant similarities and differences more closely. For example, since we started writing this book, rosemary has had its name changed from Rosmarinus officinalis to Salvia rosmarinus, and is now identified as a member of the sage (Salvia) family.

There are other, less traditional classification systems, such as phylogenetic classification, which categorizes plants according to the relationships between species.✽

WHAT IS THE BINOMIAL SYSTEM?

Also known as the Linnaean system, named after its inventor, the binomial system is the most commonly used plant-naming system across the world. Latin is used as a common language, which enables us to talk about the same plant without confusion.

In the binomial system, each plant is first named after its genus (written in italics with a capital letter) and then its species (in italics but no capital). Sometimes varieties✽ and cultivars✽ will be added to this for precision. For hybrids✽ — which are the result of cross-breeding two plants — the two names are joined with an x. And each plant also has a common name, the name by which it is generally known. It sometimes happens that the common name is the same as the Latin name.

EXAMPLE: EGGPLANT

Common name : eggplant

Latin name :Solanum melongena

Genus:Solanum

Species :melongena

Example of variety:Solanum melongena var. giganteum

Example of cultivar :Solanum melongena ‘Rosa Bianca’

Example of hybrid :Solanum melongena x Solanum torvum

PLANT CLASSIFICATION

Living organisms are divided into five kingdoms: monera, protist, fungi, animal, and plant. The plant kingdom (Plantae) incorporates three branches, within which thousands of species are classified according to their characteristics:

Bryophytes: Plants with no vascular system; for example, mosses and sphagnum.

Pteridophytes : Plants that produce no flowers or seeds, and that

reproduce using spores.

Spermatophytes : Seeded plants, with two subdivisions:

Gymnosperms : Plants that produce bare seeds without protection; for example, conifers and cycads.

Angiosperms: Plants that produce seeds inside fruit. This branch, which has more than 350,000 species, is the biggest category in the botanical repertory. These are the flowers and plants we grow in our gardens, vegetable beds, and houses.

ANGIOSPERMS

Angiosperms, also known as flowering plants, make up more than 90% of the plant life on Earth. This taxon✽ includes all floriferous✽ plants and garden vegetables listed throughout the