GARDENING Planning for spring

GARDENING Nature Knows No Limits

BY KARLA A. DALLEY

When I looked back to last year’s spring gardening article – drafted in mid-February of 2020 – I re-read it a couple of times in disbelief before I understood how much our lives had changed in the past year. That’s how I decided on this year’s title.

Yet despite what we have all been through – and will continue to endure – spring will come again. It will bring the beauty that it is known for: lovely early bulbs, hellebores, then larger bulbs like tulips and daffodils, and finally it will break into a riot of flowering shrubs and trees as if it can no longer keep its beauty to itself.

During this past year, “nature” of various kinds has provided solace to our weary state. More people than ever used our beaches and parks – to the point where they had to close during times of peak use. I saw more people out walking – and people with “pandemic puppies” in my neighborhood. Nothing like a dog to get someone out walking every day.

But what is even more amazing is that everyone, it seems, became a gardener of some sort. People who had never gardened before became gardeners and lots of them gardened on a huge scale. Many planted the so-called “quarantine gardens,” which were a type of twenty-first century Victory Gardens. People planted all sorts of edibles, herbs and even fruit trees. Even better, surveys show that not only do these gardeners intend to continue gardening in 2021, but they intend to garden even more than in 2020. A whole new generation of gardeners has been born, it seems.

But edible gardening wasn’t the only thing that got people excited last year, apparently. Because so many people were outside and spending time in their yards, 73% of them planted flowers, according to Axiom Marketing*, a marketing firm who did a survey of gardeners of all age groups. That’s an incredible number of people who wanted to plant just to beautify their yards.

What got me thinking about this was that I did not garden all that much in 2020. I made a few trips to a local garden center and one or two purchases from a specialty bulb retailer but for the most part, I simply contented myself by bringing my house plants outdoors for the summer and tending to those (lest you think that I was restrained, I have somewhere between 100-200 house plants at any one time, so that’s still quite a bit of tending!).

My initial plan in early January was to do more of the same. And then suddenly, something happened. I am not sure if it was the couple of snows at the end of January and early February, or if I was suffering from “pent up” gardening demand, but it was as if the “gardening” switch in my brain suddenly got turned on to hyper drive. I can’t wait to plant!

I am poring over catalogs to see what I might want to add to the garden. I am trying to decide how I might incorporate edibles with the copious critter problem that I have. I am planning different container designs (always a favorite thing to do). I am attending Zoom lectures about different gardening techniques, growing mushrooms from a kit in my kitchen (that is a story for another day!), and going to webinars about what the plant breeders are doing – one of my favorite topics anyway.

When I am out walking my dog, as she sniffs around my garden beds, I am eyeing them critically to see what can be added, what can be pruned and what can be changed. I’ve already done a little tree pruning and plan to do a little more if the weather permits.

Those of you who remember my “sustainable” articles from earlier years know that I am not one to clean-up my garden beds too early because I want to ensure that the beneficial insects have plenty of time to survive – so about all I can do outside is prune on warmish days. And while I do love to prune, there’s a limit to how creative that can be.

So, let’s hope for an early spring – and no late snows – this year. All of us will be happy to be outside again!

*https://axiomcom.com/2021-axiom-gardening-survey/

Karla Dalley is a garden writer and speaker from West Hartford. kdalley@comcast.net. gardendaze.wordpress.com

Photo courtesy of the Olive Gypsy Boutique, by ADRIANA LAJOIE PHOTOGRAPHY