About Karen York
Graduating from Bishop’s University in Quebec with a BA in Honours English, Karen York began her journalistic career at the Sherbrooke Record, followed by four years at the Montreal Gazette and brief stints at CBC Radio and Weekend Magazine.
Moving to Toronto, she joined the Globe and Mail where she was Arts Editor for 18 years. In 1994, she left The Globe for greener pastures – literally. Now a certified horticulturist, Karen is a botanical editor and writer based in gardener’s heaven, Victoria, BC (where she moved in 2006). She was the botanical editor (and, for a period, Managing Editor) of Gardening Life magazine, has edited numerous gardening books and, in 2001, authored her own, The Holistic Garden: Creating Spaces for Health and Healing (Prentice Hall).
Karen has written articles for Gardening Life, Canadian Gardening, International Architecture & Design, Garden Making and The Globe and Mail. She has a deep interest in the healing power of nature and has been a member of the board of the Canadian Horticultural Therapy Association since 1995. She has also given numerous presentations on horticultural therapy, and other gardening topics, at venues such as Canada Blooms and Hamilton’s Royal Botanical Gardens and to groups including Master Gardeners and garden clubs.
10 Reasons to Celebrate the Big City Escape
An escapee from the big city finds many reasons to love life in a small community on the West Coast.
Incredible (and Sometimes Edible): How to Live with Weeds
Sometimes it seems as if the only certain things in the garden are death and weeds. Gardeners are constantly battling those tough, sneaky and promiscuous plants that insinuate themselves into any scrap of bare ground. But what makes a weed a weed anyway?
The Power of Paying Attention
I spent years working in an office with no windows nearby. Years under great banks of fluorescent lights with no inkling of whether it was day or night, summer or winter, sunny or stormy. And doing a stressful job. No wonder I came to realize that it was doing me in. The wonder is that I did it for so long. Now I’m lucky enough to work at home surrounded by greenery…
Confessions of a Mistake-Prone Gardener
The other day, I was outside in my Zen-weeding mode (how does chickweed have the energy to grow year-round?) and found myself going over the successes and failures of my gardening past — kind of like mental worry beads. In the hope of saving … Read more →
Dirty Fingernails, Aphids and the Holistic Garden
Our health is inextricably bound to the Earth’s health that we have jeopardized. The good news is that, in restoring the earth, we restore ourselves.
In Praise of Trees
We tend to be amazingly cavalier about our trees, on local and global scales. Too often they are regarded not as living things but as permanent fixtures that will withstand any amount of abuse and neglect.
All Ears in the Garden: Landscape as Soundscape
It’s easy to forget that a landscape is also a soundscape. One summer we were working away in the garden, so absorbed in our earthy labours that we really didn’t pay attention to the mixed bird chorus punctuated by the occasional shriek from a … Read more →
