Curiosity, flexibility, and joy: The rewards come quickly in a tiny condo native plant garden

By Jami Blaauw-Hara

While all of us at Blooming Boulevards are drawn to the beauty and diversity of native gardens, we each have a different canvas on which to paint the colours and shapes of our favourite plants. Some of us have spacious yards on wide streets; others have smaller, circumscribed plots in townhouse complexes or on the patios of tall condo buildings.

Liz Piggott has spent the past 30 years in her Mississauga neighbourhood of neat brick townhouses, each with a tiny garden in the back and a narrow strip in the front. Though the space is small, Liz makes the most of it.

Blackeyed Susans

Growing up in Toronto and living in cities her whole life, she prefers nature and hiking to anything “fancy.” As she learned more about native plants, her curiosity — and her delight in gardening — only grew. “I enjoy gardening because it’s a great excuse to be outdoors and it’s meditative and playful,” she says.

Liz first heard about Blooming Boulevards from a friend who knows her well. “Doing anything for the environment inspires and motivates me,” she says, and Blooming Boulevards provided her with opportunities to dive deeper.  Liz has been a member since 2021, attending the plant sale annually, volunteering for various seed collection and preparation tasks, and participating in many workshops over the years. She enjoys seeing the native plant gardens of other members of Blooming Boulevards when she volunteers.

Liz volunteers with BB's seed preparation team and is delighted to get new plants for her garden at BB's annual plant sale.

Monarch butterfly and grey-headed coneflowers

Inside her cozy living room, Liz has jars of soil from different parts of her yard—each sample separated into layers of sand, silt, and clay. She measured each one to determine soil type. Her shelves also hold a stack of native plant books, including her favourite, A Garden for the Rusty-Patched Bumblebee, signed by co-author Lorraine Johnson, who was a guest author at a Blooming Boulevards plant sale. The book guided Liz’s imagination and quickly became a trusted reference. She also turned to tools from her years in IT: a detailed spreadsheet cataloguing plants, bloom times, site preferences, whether they tolerate being moved, and even how aggressive they might be.

“There is so much to learn, and I was amazed with how immersed I was in learning, just to decide what native plants will work well in my garden.” Grid paper filled with coloured drawings and dimensions helped her visualize how everything might fit within her hilly backyard.

Liz's sketch of grey-headed coneflowers in her garden

Her grandchildren were another consideration. With two sets of twins—toddlers Jack and Fraser, and babies Anna and Celine—she wanted to be sure nothing would irritate skin or cause harm. The reward came quickly: the boys stood fascinated by the bees on her New England aster this summer. She hopes the wild bergamot and hairy beardtongue she planted will be in full bloom by the time her granddaughters are toddling through the yard.

New England asters

Living in townhouse-style condominium living shapes her gardening journey in other ways too. Both the front and back yards are managed by the condo corporation and property managers, which means she has limited say in how they’re maintained. Weekly gas leaf blowers fill the area with harsh noise and pollution that impact both people and wildlife, including disturbing the leaf litter she wishes could stay for overwintering wildlife. Liz emails the board regularly asking them to ban leaf blowers or at least switch to electric ones, but so far, the response has been about cost and efficiency. Still, she continues to advocate for quieter, more environmentally friendly choices.

In her yards, she leaves dry leaves around her plants and avoids cutting anything down in the fall. She hopes to experiment with more vertical or horizontal planting to make the most of her sloped space in her backyard. One neighbour has been especially supportive and even invited her to plant in his yard.

Like all gardeners, Liz has learned through trial and error. She loves Blooming Boulevard’s advice to plant each species in groups of three for a more natural look. As her plants grow, she will adjust the garden’s design, and this year she plans to move a few plants and expand the bed slightly. Her garden is a lifelong learning project.

Liz grows zigzag goldenrod and heartleaf aster in a shady spot in her garden.

Now fully retired, Liz fills her days with her garden, helping her daughter in Toronto with the new twins, visiting her grandsons in London, and plenty of other passions—pickleball, art classes, and drawing flowers. “My head turns whenever I see a native plant garden,” she says.

Liz Piggott’s flourishing small garden reminds us that we don’t need sprawling beds to create habitat. We simply need to know the space we have, make a plan, use native plants that suit the space, and tend it with curiosity, flexibility, and joy.