Retirement, pickleball, and gardens in bloom

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LifeSaint John & SouthSalonTimes Globe

Published Sep 17, 2025 • Last updated 12 hours ago • 3 minute read

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Duncan Kelbaugh stands in front of the pickleball garden. Photo by Duncan Kelbaugh/SubmittedArticle content

Did I mention that retirement is awesome! Well, it is. It seems almost as busy as real life, but it really isn’t. You just fill your days with things you like or love to do, plus a few necessary chores and duties. At any time you can just stop for a break, take a nap, or go fishing, golfing, or playing pickleball. And there I am, in the midst of two of my favourite pastimes, gardening and pickleball. I went full immersion by surrounding the pickleball courts with colourful landscaping. Best of both worlds!

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I certainly won’t give you any pickleball pointers, and I have featured this colourful corner enough in recent columns that I’ll only mention a couple of gardening points. Though I felt I had kept the ##!!**#!* box tree moth fairly well at bay spraying my boxwoods with Safers Endall (environmentally kind soap and pyrethrin insecticide) earlier in the season. I was late spraying the boxwood hedge behind me, and a fair number of the caterpillars evaded my efforts and caused some defoliation, thinning and browning of the foliage. Not ruined, but somewhat disfigured and set back. I will spray one more time soon to try and minimize further damage now and next summer. Most of the other boxwoods on my property had only minor chewing by this recently arrived pest, thankfully, and look just fine. All who visit the courts love the alternating red wave petunias and sweet potato vines along the top of the wall. Though the vines are beginning to cascade over the wall, they are behind their size in past years, I believe because of a later planting time and then the very dry growing conditions all summer. With the coarse drainage rock I put behind these wall blocks, the six to eight inch of topsoil I provided at the top quickly drains and dries after watering.

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Victoria blue salvia, red celosia, and dusty miller brighten up the flowerbed. Photo by Duncan Kelbaugh/Submitted

Hard to believe, but this is already the last column of the 2025 season! So I thought I’d better include a shot of the annuals, as they are at their peak right now, in full size and bloom, with no hint of frost so far. In the background the tall spiky blue flowers are Victoria blue salvia. They are what I would call a leap-of-faith annual when you buy them, with no flowers on them at all, even for the first month they are in the ground. Just green foliage for late May and June, then gradually opening up in July. But for mid July through September, they provide a lovely rich dark blue background for the brighter red and silver in the foreground. And they are one of a short list of annuals that the deer leave alone (not my worry, sorry!) (for having a deer fence and subliminally gloating, that is). Betty and I both love red as accent colour indoors and out, so the red celosia is an essential part of our annuals display. The two silver patches are dusty miller, a bright foliage annual that gives steady contrasting colour all summer and well past the first frosts. Along the edges of most beds I put a border of blue ageratum, as it stays under 10 inches tall, and only slowly spreads, keeping it neatly within the bed borders. Both it and the dusty miller are fully deer resistant, so you could use this colour combination in Deerville, and just substitute red salvia for the celosia.

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Why is there an empty spot in front of the large boulder? Several dusty miller transplants failed to take root after planting. It’s a bit of a damp spot and such drought tolerant plants with silvery foliage don’t like wet feet. I meant to transplant over some ageratum, but never got around to it. And I left the little green border of new chickweed plants returning for the fourth time this summer to make you feel better about any weeds you might have. “What a nice columnist he is…”

I hope you gardeners are looking forward to the fall gardening season as much as I am. I just find it a much more enjoyable, less pressure-full time of year, with no annuals to plant, no vegetables to plant or keep weeded, less or no watering, and more pleasant working conditions, namely cooler, less buggy, warm dry soil (hopefully not the dust we currently have!), and gradually less and less aggressive weeds. It’s my time of year to really enjoy my gardens, get lots done, and feel well prepared for the coming spring, which will be here before we know it!

Duncan Kelbaugh owned and operated Brunswick Nurseries Garden Centre in Quispamsis for 48 years before its closure in June.

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