A New Year, With New Gardening Possibilities

For a gardener, the wonderful thing about January in New England is that all things are possible.  Whether the ground is bare or under a blanket of snow, you need only look outdoors – or, better yet, take a walk – and imagine what might be in 2019.  That’s what we’re doing this week.

Courtesy of our neighbors’ trees, three November and December wind storms filled our property with thousands of plump pine cones – themselves a product of this year’s wet summer and fall.  We carted off barrels and bags of them lest they either sprout into pine forests or attract unwanted squirrels.  Because the cones buried themselves in nooks and crannies, extracting them gave us the opportunity to mentally revisit our 2018 garden and think about what can be done this year.

Thousands of pine cones

For example, I pulled a clutch of pine cones from a bed of daisies.  Last year’s stalks were cut down in November but the 2019 greens are already in place, over-wintering at the base of the plants; forming a blueprint of what the bed will look like next year.  Just two years ago this bed consisted of eight, gallon-sized pots on three-foot centers.  Now, they’ve grown into an unbroken mass.  Should the daisies be encouraged to spread further?  Based on their current ‘footprint’, it’s likely we’ll be offering our friends potted-up daisies next year.

Another example: our miniature clumping birch looked spectacular last year.  Now shorn of its leaves, however, it’s easy to see the crossing branches that will spell trouble down the road.  With the ground frozen, it’s easy to get in to cut the problem branches.  If we waited until April, we’d be up to our shins in mud.

This eupatorium grew so tall it hid
the redbud tree behind it

Or this: last year we planted a marvelous variegated eupatorium in one of our beds.  The foliage was so dramatic we elected not to trim it back in June.  Big mistake; the perennial grew to more than six feet in height, dwarfing everything around it, including a young Cersis canadensis ‘Burgundy Hearts’.  In the cold light of January, I tagged the eight-inch stubble of the eupatorium with the stern command: ‘trim me in June’.

This was to have been the site of a
water feature; it never seemed right

Betty has wanted a water feature in the garden ever since we built our house.  The original site was planned for a space behind our home but it never felt right and so the project went into abeyance.  This fall we added several hundred bulbs to one of the beds in the front of property.  Now, with the leaves off the trees and shrubs, and the outline of the newly planted bulbs apparent, it’s obvious where a small pond ought to be.  That will be a spring project. 

The garden is full of tales to tell.  When everything is green and in bloom, it’s easy to yield to temptation and say, ‘Leave it alone; it’s beautiful just like it is’.  In the brown (or snow) of winter, logic rears its glorious head.  The result will be a new, re-imagined garden.