If I am honest with myself, and I usually am, I must acknowledge that for all my bitching about winter I actually appreciate a season without gardening. The dormant season gives me a chance to recharge the ol’ batteries. Come October I have had quite enough of mowing, weeding and watering. I don’t know how gardeners in warmer climes stay motivated all year long.
Still, sometime around late January or early February the gardening batteries are near full charge and I start getting antsy to get back out into the yarden. Mid-to-late winter is when I usually head outside and begin to chop down and remove the detritus from last year’s growing season. But for the most part the weather is still cold and there ain’t much to look at.
So what I spend the winter doing, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this, is perusing plant catalogs and magazines to find ideas and inspiration for the upcoming growing season.
Non-gardeners might think that all there is to gardening is plot some plants in the ground and, viola!, a garden! They would be wrong. Let me explain. Veggie gardeners spend the winter pondering what veggies worked and which ones didn’t. So they’ll intently study seed catalogs for different cultivars in hopes for even greater success in the upcoming year.
Flower and landscape gardeners, such as myself, are never quite satisfied with how their gardens look. For example, plants might unexpectedly die and leave holes in the border, or might be struggling in a less than ideal location for said plants. Other issues might be plants that grew much larger than expected and squeezed out their neighbors. And sometimes, *stage whisper* it’s just a case that a gardener falls out of love with a plant and decides it is time for the plant and the gardener go their separate ways.
Truth be told, most gardeners never feel like his or her garden is finished. There is always room for improvement.
I have spent this winter pondering how to improve a section of the border over by the birdbath. This section has been a thorn in my side for years. When we moved in many years ago, this section had a mature aspen and a dwarf lilac. So when I renovated this area, I put in a bunch of shade loving plants. Well, the aspen died and the lilac became diseased. Both came out and now there was no shade for the shade loving plants.
I’ve tried to recreate the shady conditions by planting trees. Unfortunatly, two of the three trees I planted have died or are currently dying. Only the redbud is hanging in there. So this year I said to hell with it and I am giving up on trying to make this a shady spot (this section is a hot and dry south facing location), and instead make it more heat and drought tolerant.
I have spent the winter months doing my research. I am going to dig out the dying tree and putting in drought and heat tolerant plants such as Panicum ornamental switch grasses, blanket flowers, butterfly weeds and native penstemons. When I finally get to work on this area, I will be sure to include some before and after pictures.
That’s not all the changes I have planned for the upcoming growing season, but since this post is getting a little long, I will do a part 2 of this subject very soon.
How about you? Have you made any plans for the upcoming growing season?
