Cold Climate Gardening

Donna Marie emailed:

I am desperate! I have recently bought a property with a huge front and back garden. Both gardens are completely overgrown. Huge bramble bushes and unidentified shrubs loom out at me each time I walk out onto the tired old patio at the back of the house. The property is on the side of a mountain (terraced gardens originally, I think). It is such a huge project! I am a young single woman and can only afford to landscape it myself ‘bit-by-bit’.

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I’ve wanted a birdbath for a long time, but most birdbaths I’ve seen just didn’t appeal to me. They either seemed too crude or too faddish, and every single one that didn’t look shoddy was too expensive. I really liked the classical good looks of this one, but it was $375 in an upscale catalog, and that was several years ago. On top of that, the advertising copy advised to protect from frost. The last thing I need is to ruin a four hundred buck investment with one night of forgetfulness.

This past Thursday I was out running errands and the first store I entered was HomeGoods. If you’re not familiar with this store, it sells kitchen, bath, and decorating items that didn’t sell somewhere else. The prices are reduced from the original, but the selection can be erratic and eccentric. That is, just because something is on the sales floor doesn’t mean they can order more or additional items to match what they have. What you see is all there is.

The first thing I saw when I entered was, you guessed it, a birdbath. It was grouped with a coordinating cafe table and two chairs. They were all made out of mosaic tile in shades of green, though they had plenty of mosaic pieces in pink and purple. It was garden whimsy teetering on the edge of kitsch, and it utterly charmed me. And that surprised me. “I can’t believe you like that thing,” I muttered to myself (inside my head). “But I do,” myself replied. I threaded my way through the store, not finding what I was looking for, and somehow found myself back at the birdbath. “It’s not anything like that one in the catalog,” the interior conversation continued. “I know. But it looks like it would be perfect for a cottage garden. My garden.”

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Art in the garden. Just hearing that phrase brings to my mind classical statues reigning from alcoves sculpted into centuries-old hedges, or huge, abstract monoliths sitting on perfectly manicured lawns, both completely alien to my way of thinking and my way of life. But there is also garden art that is more casual, personal–eccentric, even–and yes, whimsical. I feel a lot more comfortable coming across this kind of art in a garden. I like a little something–you can’t always call it ornament–in a garden that makes you do a double-take, and then you chuckle or even laugh out loud. Or, it might not amuse you so much as reveal something about the gardener. The best garden art, of course, does both.

I was reminded of all this viewing Susan of Takoma Park’s creatures of the wall. I love the serendipity of a painting mistake that led to the creation of this tropical sea wall, with each creature a souvenir from a tropical vacation. And I have to wonder if I came home with the wrong color paint, would I have used it anyway, or would I have trotted back to the store? It’s all a moot point as I have no underdeck. But it brings home the lesson that art in the garden is a very personal thing, and it should consist of objects that really speak to you, and speak of you.

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I started this post quite a while ago and it’s taken me this long to finish it, partly because I lacked time, and partly due to technical difficulties–we’ve been having a lot of trouble with our internet connection.

The first weekend in April our area experienced the worst flooding in 70 years. It was a combination of a lot of rain falling on, and melting, a lot of snow, over earth that was still frozen and couldn’t absorb it. From April 4th until this evening (April 22) it didn’t rain at all. We’ve had one of the most glorious Aprils I can remember, with lots of sunshine and warmer than average daytime temps. (Still got in the 20s (F) most every night, though.) Glorious, but dangerous. Until the thunderstorm moved in, there was a heightened fire threat in effect. From sopping wet to flammable in two and a half weeks. Incredible. Yet how much you want to bet people complain about the rain that’s now falling?

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I finally re-skinned the greenhouse today. Rather like changing a mammoth bed–old cover off, new one on. I had to do this because the plastic I got last fall turned out to be the kind that makes for perpetual rain inside the house. Disgusting and mildew-provoking, plus it causes wash-outs in pots. The cheapest plastic was not a bargain.
I’ve been waiting for a non-windy, non-rainy, warmish day, and this was the first one. Inside, I’ve already built a new potting bench and this time I under-slung the potting tub so I can clear off the bench and waste less soil.

Those wiggle-wires work a treat holding the plastic, but they are a bear to un-do and re-do. (Note to self: 4 years from now, take off the old on one day, and put the new on the next.) I’m only typing this because of the existence of ibuprofen.

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I can hear, but still not see redwing blackbirds trilling in the trees, and this morning the Canada geese announced themselves with plaintive hooting and great lazy shadows crossing the lawn. We are perched on the edge of spring! I’ve been preoccupied for the last three years with other matters, and gardening has taken a back seat. But as my life calms down somewhat, I’m discovering that one never gets away from gardening; it’s been there the whole time, running in the background of my mind. And I seem to have come back to it with a greater dollop of patience and wisdom than when I left: problems that before were insurmountable, seem much less daunting to me now. Also, the effects I was frustrated in not being able to achieve before, seem to have either happened behind my back or my standards have declined considerably. Probably the latter� But best of all, the old familiar rush of excitement has returned as I contemplate the seasons and their chores before me. Our local Christian Center advertised Easter as New Year’s for the soul. Surely spring is New Year’s for the gardener. I have made all sorts of resolutions.

My first task is to dig up from my memory all the little surprises I managed to plant before the cold drove me into the house last autumn. After our new kitchen extension was put on the back of the house in 2002, the views from those bright windows cried out for garden beds so I started a terraced bank behind the house. It took two years for me to dig the five layers, and still they need constant adjustment. The above picture that I took this morning shows the pine logs that I use to contain each step and how the ravages of winter have left them in total disarray. They are dislodged by water run-off from storms, by deer stumbling across them, by lawn mowers that catch their edges. However, they will do until a better idea presents itself to me. Each row has a footpath behind it, wide enough for me to crawl along, weeding and muttering and generally communing with things. I usually have a cat in attendance, hiding among the daylily foliage and reaching out a paw now and then to let the weeding hand know who’s boss.

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Just came across the November/December 2002 issue of Organic Gardening, and on pages 34-35 they had plans for the mother of all coldframes. (Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the plans on the Organic Gardening website, so you’ll have to find the issue at a library and photocopy it.) The author, David Wann, and his neighbor designed “a frame that could deliver fresh food straight through our harsh Colorado winter. Our plan of attack was to give it a sheltered spot oriented directly south, sheath it in insulation, sink it several inches below ground level . . . and equip it with thermal mass–basically, water-filled milk jugs–to store solar energy.” The coldframe is built around the dimensions of a discarded …

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