The ACO walks with you on your lifelong journey with heart-based adoption competent support, education, training, and community. Every child or youth deserves permanency; finding a forever home for them is important.
If you are considering adoption or have been impacted by adoption, the ACO is not only an important destination, it’s where you belong.
Prepare for a successful planting season by understanding what and where to grow Edmonton’s most common types of flowers and trees.
Horticulturist Lisa Gawreluck, green house manager at Blue Grass Nursery, Sod and Garden Centre, digs deep into her gardening knowledge to recommend the best plants for each area of the garden.
First stop: our central information hub. Here, you will find all the support needed as a prospective adoptive parent and learn more about the process. We also offer assistance in mapping a plan and navigating Ontario’s public adoption system.
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Once approved, the next destination is AdoptOntario.
Here, highly skilled coordinators provide specialized matching and recruitment services. All aimed at connecting every child or youth with the family that is right for them.
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Adoption completed, the Pathways program offers families training, support and connections. Both new and long-time adoptive parents and their children benefit, as do professionals.
There are also online webinars for everyone, no matter what stage they’re at along the journey.
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This is an important stop for youth who are at risk or have aged out of the child welfare system. We provide the supportive connections they often lack. And promote and facilitate the kind of permanency they need to thrive.
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A party of sun-loving perennials should include brightly coloured, drought-resistant salvia, tough but colourful coneflowers — a member of the daisy family also known as echinacea — and delphiniums, which add height to the back of the bed with clusters of blue, purple or pink flowers.
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HOW DOES YOUR
GARDEN
GROW?
Full Sun
Verbiage of plants that grow in the shade.
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Shade Plants
Perennial plants that shun the sun include hardy hostas which prefer to have their feet wet but otherwise require no special attention. Bleeding hearts come back year after year with their white, pink or red heart-shaped flowers, and ligularia, which have beautiful leaves. A favourite variety is the rocket, or leopard plant, noted for huge yellow flower spikes.
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Shady Types
Plants that do well in morning sun only include fragrant, easy-to-grow lily of the valley, a flowering woodland plant with a sweet smell. Goat’s beard is a tall perennial with attractive white feathery plumes. Colourful columbine, also called Granny’s bouquet, is one of the first to come out in the spring year after year.
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Partial Shade
Plants that love swampy conditions, like water by the backyard pond, include the dramatic and exotic elephant ears. The huge leaves of these plants provide more interest than the bright pink or purple blossoms. Other plants include forget-me-nots (myosotis) with five-petal blue blossoms that love humidity and shade but till tolerate sun, and cardinal flower (lobelia) a fast-growing mid-height perennial with bright red stalks.
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Water Plants
Dracaena spikes are out and tropical-looking canna lilies are in for the centrepiece of decorative containers. The tubers can be saved and reused every year. Shrub-like heliotrope, smothered in purple flowers, can smell faintly like licorice, and angel wings begonia with big waxy dotted green leaves offer a magnificent display of flowers.
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Containers
Ornamental perennial grasses that provide interest all year round include Karl Foerster with cream coloured plumes and blue oat grass, a medium to short grass that is truly blue. Consider an annual grass, like fibre optic grass (which isn’t really a grass) with stunning tiny silver balls at the end of each blade or mondo grass, a dark purple almost black grass for those seeking something unusual.
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Grasses
The very dense moss phlox is regarded as one of the most colourful of all ground covers. Stonecrop is perfect for dry or sunny areas and is a succulent from the sedum family. Dianthus, also called sweet William, is short-lived but can’t be killed easily and boasts multi-coloured flowers that resemble tiny carnations that bloom from spring to fall. Annuals like alyssum and portulaca are favourites. Children love gazanias, which close when the sun hides behind the clouds.
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Borders
Toba hawthorns top the list of hardy ornamentals to consider, recommended for smaller yards in a sheltered spot. Japanese tree lilacs are another good choice. For larger areas of the yard, choose virus-resistant green and mongolian ash or trembling aspen. Gladiator crabapples have a profusion of hot pink blossoms in spring but prepare for fruit to drop in the fall.
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Trees
After dandelions and flowering bulbs, peonies are an perennial that provide tons of nectar for hungry bees. So do heliotrope, an annual with a faint but enticing licorice smell, and cleomes, attractive to pollinators but deer and rabbit resistant. A new trend in alternative lawns is clover with white or baby pink blooms that will feed the bees virtually all growing season.
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Bee Garden
Requiring little to no water, euphorbia (spurge) is drought resistant and grows even in poor soil conditions. The many varieties of spurge are beautiful in rock gardens. Sedums are a huge plant category to check out, but look for purple emperor and moss stonecrop, two varieties that don’t require a lot of care. Rock cress is also in the sedum family, a herbaceous perennial with fragrant blooms in spring.
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To see what grows best in your garden, click the flowers below.