Globe Climate: The one with great gardening advice

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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.

What better way to connect with nature than exploring it firsthand?

For the seventh edition of Hidden Canada, Canadian travel writers reveal 10 corners of the country you may not have been to before. We have more information about how you can search for fossils on a Nova Scotia beach, find four seasons of fun in a New Brunswick national park and explore a Yukon village that’s set up for adventure. Each story will fuel your wanderlust and sense of adventure.

Now, let’s catch you up on other news.

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Noteworthy reporting this week:

1. Artificial intelligence: Energy-hungry AI models could strain water and power grids. Can the sector handle the demand?
2. Holidays: Out with a bang? The long weekend tradition of fireworks could be coming to an end
3. Wildfires: Fire evacuees were facing eviction from already-booked hotels the past week. Today, the status of the wildfire that threatened Fort McMurray changed to “being held” after fire moved more quickly than expected. Weather conditions helped end the evacuation notice before the long weekend.
4. Technology: Rogers launches AI-powered cameras to detect wildfires in B.C.
5. Insurance: Facing rising claims, insurer Intact is trying to protect homes before they burn
6. Electric vehicles: Winning over the next wave of EV buyers brings fresh challenges
7. From The Narwhal: Bald eagles nearly died out. What can we learn from their return to the southern Great Lakes?

A deeper dive

The Gardening package

We’re officially past the Victoria Day long weekend, which means we’ve unofficially started summer. Wait, what’s that? You haven’t finished up the work in your garden yet? Not to stress, we’ve got some stories to help inspire you to get into the ground.

Gardening is a great workout. While many Canadians tend to their plants simply for the joy of it, the pastime also offers some real health benefits. It gives your cardio a boost, a 2023 study from Penn State found that adults aged 65 and up who garden had better cardiovascular health than those who didn’t. All that pushing, pulling, squatting and bending also helps with mobility. Plus, people who spend more time outdoors tend to have less chronic diseases. Not to mention the boost your mental health!

Expert gardeners share mistakes and happy accidents. A few lessons to share: Make sure you are checking that you’re planting the right plant in the right place; Never assume that a plant with a sweet, benign name is innocent; If you choose to manipulate a tree’s form, you must be prepared to commit to it for its life; lastly, make sure you know your invasive species. They can be like those party guests who just don’t know how to call it a night, muscling out the native plants.

The joys of growing your own food. Kitchens and gardens go together. If your only space is a windowsill or sunny table for containers to sit, you can still grow things to eat – even if it’s just sprouts to scatter over your pastas and salads. For those with more space, The Side Gardener: Recipes & Notes from My Garden is a story of how bestselling cookbook author Rosie Daykin turned a languishing patch of land beside her Vancouver home into a prolific garden. Plus a wilted greens tart recipe!

Ditch your lawn! Leaving your lawn behind is one way to support biodiversity, reduce water use and shift to a more modern landscaping aesthetic. Luckily, there are techniques to make biodiverse gardening more broadly attractive and less challenging for communities to accept. For example, rewilding isn’t all or nothing, you don’t have to replace your entire lawn to make a difference. Plus, if you’re the only person in your neighbourhood making big uncomfortable changes to your yard nurseries and organizations across the country are happy to help those who are new to native plants and biodiverse gardening.

The future of flower farming is female. Marni Martin-McTavish lives on the Huntsville, Ont., farm where she grew up. Her small business is just one of hundreds of new flower farms sprouting up across North America – almost all female-led. The seasonal flower movement – not just on this continent but around the globe – is being powered by women who are reshaping what a traditional flower farm used to be. Flower farming wasn’t considered a feasible option in the male-dominated world of commercial growing. The rise of small-scale flower farms created a space where women could tap into their passion for nature and build ventures where their lifestyles and values aligned.

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What else you missed

• Environment groups, First Nation want public hearing on Pathways carbon capture plans
• How do we preserve our mental health in the fight for planetary health?
• Relief greets federal order to fix benzene leaks after plastics plant pollution
• 2023 summer was Northern Hemisphere’s warmest in more than 2,000 years, study finds
• Health professionals take climate action to care for patients and the planet
• Use of alert system delayed during deadly flash flooding in Nova Scotia: report
• Climate change impacts millions in India. But as the country votes, some politicians skirt the issue
• Orcas sink another yacht, prompting Spanish authorities to issue warning for the Strait of Gibraltar
• More than 60 per cent of the world’s coral reefs may have bleached in past year, U.S. agency says
• Biden sharply hikes U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports, including EV batteries and computer chips
• Once-in-a-generation wind event caused deaths, extensive damage across Houston, meteorologist says

Opinion and analysis

Marsha Lederman: If we’re going to flip our lids over coffee cups, it should be for the right reason: our plastics problem

Wolfgang Alschner: Joe Biden’s new China tariffs puts Canada in a bind on electric vehicles

Editorial board: The reality of Canada’s new season of fire

Kelly Cryderman: The elite want their own racetrack in Alberta’s badlands. These local farmers are pushing back

Green Investing

Many of the issues and questions that delayed the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project (TMX) – concerns over its safety and the environment, fights over Indigenous land rights, long-term economic risks – remain.

Jeffrey Jones, The Globe’s sustainable finance reporter, explains on our podcast the ballooning costs of the TMX and why one of Canada’s top exports is creating tension with its future climate targets. Listen to The Decibel today.

• Canadian banks directed almost US$104-billion to oil and gas last year, report says
• Shell shareholders reject investor resolution urging company to set tighter climate targets
• Rising sea levels could severely disrupt crude oil shipments, erode energy security, think tank warns

Making waves

Do you know an engaged individual? Someone who represents the real engines pursuing change in the country? Email us at GlobeClimate@globeandmail.com to tell us about them.

Photo of the week

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Guides and Explainers

• Want to learn to invest sustainably? We have a class for that: Green Investing 101 newsletter course for the climate-conscious investor. Not sure you need help? Take our quiz to challenge your knowledge.
• We’ve rounded up our reporters’ content to help you learn about what a carbon tax is, what happened at COP28 and just generally how Canada will change because of climate change.
• We have ways to make your travelling more sustainable and if you like to read, here are books to help the environmentalist in you grow, as well as a downloadable e-book of Micro Skills - Little Steps to Big Change.

Catch up on Globe Climate

• Prevention and preparation as wildfire season beings
• Can floating nuclear power plants serve remote Northern communities?
• So Canada bought a pipeline. Now what?
• Canada’s bird watchers are also observing climate change

We want to hear from you. Email us: GlobeClimate@globeandmail.com. Do you know someone who needs this newsletter? Send them to our Newsletters page.