In The Garden Shed
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| Dahlia |
Ah, winter! The gardening chores are long finished now and it's time to curl up by the fire with some gardening magazines and start making plans and take notes for this years garden and flower beds. Order up some seeds online from McKenzie's, Stokes, or Thompson/Morgan's.
What kind of changes will you make in 2012? Will you try growing some of the latest new tomato varieties that are always popping up or stick to your old time proven favorite? Switch to raised bed gardening? Rotate your crops? Build a new garden shed or revitalize your old one? Install a pond?
Try growing something new? I planted some spring flowering bulbs in the fall, and am anxious to see how that works out, especially because I bought at least one grab bag of mixed tulip bulbs unmarked as to what variety and color they are.
I grew up on a farm, and our garden there was easily the size of a football field and everything that could possibly be grown was. Flowers were everywhere, including the garden along with the vegetables. A lot of the flowers and shrubs were later recreated into my own gardens. Things I enjoyed when I was growing up like Corn Flowers, Snowball Viburnum, Poppies, and Lily of the Valley and even Ferns. I can still remember the our garden shed, we called the Berry House. All the hoes, rakes spades, a tiller, 3 mowers, axes, berry baskets, bushel baskets, gasoline, seed,cord, and all other manner of gardening implements and even a bit of pesticide for the potato bugs. I used to like the strange mixed aroma of the berry House. I wondered how we ever managed to get in and out of there with so much stuff packed into it.
I always lean heavily towards perennials because they make good economic sense and most can be divided later on a continuing periodical basis.
Annuals that reseed themselves like Poppies and Viola's are a good choice too.
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| Corn Flowers or Bachelor's Buttons |
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| Snowball Viburnum |
I was a resident gardener for a time in England, and worked for a reputable commercial gardening and landscaping company for a season. Being from Canada, I had to quickly learn about all the plants, trees and shrubs that are native to England that you don't usually see here in Canada. I was able to continue gardening all winter for at least one of my years there, with the usually favorable climate on the South Coast, and that was an enjoyable first for me.
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| Even two different colors can create high drama |
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| Ring A Tree With Spring Flowering Crocus |
Build a rock garden this spring if you don't already have one. I once built a rock garden and a rock wall using only large field stones that I gathered from a empty field where a new neighborhood would be built. It was hard work but I managed to ferry a few hundred rocks to my house with my pickup truck for free.
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| From My English Rose Garden |
Make a 3 sided trellis to hide an ugly feature in your yard and plant with climbing Roses. If you live in a colder zone, try hardy Explorer Roses. One day while working as a gardener, I was dropped off at a park where to my surprise, I had to prune over 500 Rose bushes myself in the hot sun. Snippety snip, snip, I had to move at a clip. A wee bit taxing, but the job got done and talk about practice.
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| From The Garden |
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| Grow Flowers And Shrubs That Attract Butterflies |
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| Dramatic Pampas Grass |
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| Holly |
Wishing you a bountiful and productive 2012 in the garden.
Do Have A Good Day And See You There.
Jeffrey R Hilton
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