Gardening is always hands on, but Mary Parker is babying her plants a little longer than usual this spring.
The longtime gardener — who prefers growing flowers and shrubs to veggies — says New Brunswick's recent cold snap means her seedlings are still spending the night indoors, though she takes them out for some fresh air when temperatures warm up in the afternoon.
This is the typical process when growing flowers and veggies from seed, but Parker says her French marigolds, black hollyhock and chamomile sprouts are usually fully outdoors by the time Victoria Day long weekend rolls around.
Unseasonably cool weather in many parts of the country is testing the gardening know-how of green thumbs with young plants too fragile for the yard, particularly in Fredericton, where frost covered the ground Thursday morning.
"You've got to get them used to being outside. You just can't take your seedlings and throw them out there. They'll die. You've got to baby them along a little bit until they get used to being in the outside world," said Parker, vice-president of the Fredericton Garden Club.
"The soil right now is just a little bit too cold."
Temperatures across much of Canada are cooler than usual this week, with chill gripping provinces including Alberta, Ontario and Nova Scotia. In Parker's province of New Brunswick, there's been a bit of a weather roller-coaster this month, said Jill Maepea, a meteorologist with Environment Canada.
Temperatures started off about average at the beginning of May, and then climbed to record highs last week.
But this week, Maepea said, a low weather system moved in and brought a cold snap that lingered. It was below freezing this week, and was only 5 C in New Brunswick on Friday morning. Environment Canada predicts a rainy weekend there with temperatures that won't rise above 11 C — a far cry from the average 20 C at this time of year.
"We're seeing a lot of cloud and showers on and off, and some drizzle, which results in the cooler temperatures, too," she said.
That drizzle is also posing a bit of a problem for Parker, who says her lawn is dotted with mushrooms and the bottom leaves on her tulips are "limp and mushy."
"Plants don't like to have wet feet. They don't like their roots to stay wet for long periods of time," she said.
Overall, though, she doesn't expect the cold to have a lasting impact.
"Plants are tough," she said. "They're used to surviving, and they're probably tougher than the gardeners."
Still, the cold, wet weather came at an inconvenient time for some of Toronto's most avid gardeners.
The Garden Club of Toronto held its annual Spring Blooms event on Thursday, and while there were more than a hundred horticultural specimens and floral designs on display, a warmer month would have yielded a richer bounty.
Whimsical "fairy garden" floral designs sat just inside the entrance to the Toronto Botanical Garden's main building, completed by students in one of the club's classes. Each one was a miniature scene — fairy and gnome figurines the size of a thumbnail were arranged in a shallow pot among rooted plants that towered over them like lush trees and shrubs.
Further inside the show, houseplants and cut flowers were displayed in unobtrusive pots and small glass vases, each labeled with its scientific and common name.
"Our horticultural exhibits behind us are not nearly as plentiful at the moment as they were last year, just because May has been so cold," said Diana Kennedy, who chairs the show.
"You know, a lot of the plants have not matured yet, so they're all shivering out there along with the rest of us."
Environment Canada meteorologist Geoff Coulson said Ontario was subject to a stubborn weather system that left it with dreary climes for more than a week.
He said Ontario's stubborn weather system is expected to bring cooler temperatures until midday Sunday. The snap included Toronto's coldest March 22 since 1967, only reaching 10.1 C.
Coulson expected cooler temperatures to continue until midday Sunday, but said would-be gardeners might consider holding off planting until early June, just to be safe.
Martha Huffman, chair of the Toronto club's horticultural committee, said the rain was more of an inconvenience than anything.
"People who were thinking ahead cut (their flowers) yesterday morning before it rained," she said Thursday afternoon, as a steady rain drummed on the roof over her head.
"People like me, who were running around like crazy helping to get this show set up — I got home at 5:30 last night and had to go out in the pouring rain and cut my couple of things that were in bloom."
While the blossoms didn't droop in the rain, she said they may not have reached their full potential.
"Because the temperatures have been cool, and we haven't had as much sun as usual, things maybe aren't as big and as lush," she said.
"But we can't control the weather, so we use what we have."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 23, 2025.
Nicole Thompson, The Canadian Press
