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January 9th, 2010, Outside My Window
 When designing a garden
planting, winter should factor into your plans as much as the flowering
season. Bark colours, plant forms, grass plumes, tufted seedheads
...
Once the blanket of white envelopes everything, a winter garden can be
just as interesting to look out onto than in summer.
Different, but beautiful in it's own more subtle way.
I leave most of my dead debris
clean-up until late March just before the ground starts to thaw.
(Later in April the soil is saturated with water and
 walking on it badly
damages it's structure.)
Happy new year! Evelyn
SEED - It all starts here.
by Evelyn Wolf, Feb. 2001
“Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up
where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed.
Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am
prepared to expect wonders”
Henry D. Thoreau, from FAITH IN A SEED
What is it that is so
magical and wondrous about plant seed? Perhaps it's that it all starts here – the promise that spring WILL come
and flowers WILL bloom again.
Spring seems so far away still, but on a late winter day while thinking on which
plants to start from seed, worries of the moment fade quickly to thoughts of new plants to fill gaps in the perennial bed,
... cheerful flowers for the wedding bouquet in July, ... tomatoes for
an August family picnic, ... herbs for drying to flavour a great winter stew.
Such possibilities in those tiny shiny little coats!
Last year's garden and the entire season ahead is all imagined clearly in those few
quiet winter moments when seeds are sown. Those little peat pots are filled with
rich soil from last
year's compost pile, planted up with seed perhaps passed on by a friend, and
given a little water to bring them to life. The circle complete. Secrets, dreams, and
promises for the future both near and distant, wrapped up safely in tight shiny
coats.
Sowing seed is an act of confidence in new beginnings, a bountiful future, and that our faith in some things still being simple and sure is not unfounded. When we have “faith in a seed”, all seems possible.
Evelyn
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Index to
Dec. to March
gardening tips (or garden dreaming!) for York Region
gardeners.
Seed
Starting
Perennial Plants for
Winter Interest Garden Design.
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