Cold Climate Gardening

This photo was taken two days before the digital thermometer bottomed out in January 2005Quite a while ago, someone emailed me, asking what was a cold climate. I never did answer them, because I thought it was obvious. A cold climate is any climate too cold to grow the plants you really want to grow. If you live in Austin, and you want to grow pineapples outdoors, obviously your climate is too cold. If you live next door to me, and you want to grow crape myrtles; sorry, you live in a cold climate.

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The Intimate Garden: Twenty Years and Four Seasons in Our Garden by Gordon and Mary Hayward belongs to the rare breed of landscape design book that is actually helpful:
One private residential garden–not little glimpses of a dozen gardens
The garden was developed over many years. (They figured it out as they went along)
They tell you the problem, solutions considered, and what they finally implemented
They tell you about their mistakes, and how they corrected them
There is a labeled map of the whole gardenI only know of one other book with the same scope that is so helpful, and that is Mary Keen’s Creating a Garden. But Mary Keen lives in Great Britain, and even while drooling over the gorgeous photos of her garden, I’m always wondering, “Is that hardy here?”

The Haywards, on the other hand, live in Vermont, in Zone 4, and I can be fairly certain that if a plant grows for them, it will grow for me.

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I took this photo yesterday, a day ahead of Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. I knew that rain was predicted for Wednesday afternoon and throughout today, but late yesterday morning it was merely overcast and quite mild, and I thought, “Go looking for flowers now, or forget about it.”

So I went galomphing about in the nearly slushy snow, and took photos of snowdrops in various stages of bud. These were the closest to blooming.

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By 9 a.m. this morning about 8 inches of snow had fallen, and the weather service predicts

Snow will continue right into this evening… heavy at times.

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Quite a while back I cast aspersions on the ability of a southerner to write a book about northern gardening. I take it back. Felder Rushing has done an excellent job writing Tough Plants for Northern Gardens: Low Care, No Care, Tried and True Winners. Mr. Rushing, sir, I apologize.

Turns out the man has done a lot of traveling, and what’s more, he was paying attention and taking notes the whole time, or, as he puts it, “While looking for real gardens in the older parts of town, I have spent more time backing up for a second look than going forward.” (p. 23) As you might expect from a man who also wrote Passalong Plants, Rushing is not interested in pushing the latest patented hybrids. He is writing a book for those who sorta think they might like to garden, but feel intimidated. He wants gardening to be as common sense and matter-of-fact for these people as it was for their grandparents or great-grandparents. And isn’t that where we all start, no matter when we started? We stuck a plant or seed in the ground; it grew, and we thought to ourselves, “Gosh, even I can do this.”

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I wrote this essay several years ago after the winter of 1993-1994 and I dig it out to reread every winter in which I feel I’m suffering excessively. Of course, no matter how bad your winter is, someone else can top you, so I don’t promote this as the worst cabin fever anyone ever had, just the worst I ever had. Still, I bet I’ve got at least 80% of you beat.
Rundy and Talitha standing in our driveway March 1994. The arrows point to the top of the piles of shoveled snow, which rise above Rundy’s five-foot height. You can also see the edge of the porch roof on the left. (Click image for larger view.)
I suppose I should have been suspicious when we got a foot of snow on Halloween. But we live in a zone 4 climate, and flurries, even the occasional inch or two, are not uncommon for the end of October. Besides, it was really wet snow. Another couple degrees warmer and it would have been all rain. In a day or two it had melted–a fluke. But soon it snowed again. And again. The children thought it was wonderful. They sledded and built snowmen to their hearts’ content. But it got colder and colder. Unlike other years, the temperature didn’t rise above freezing, even during the day. The driveway never showed itself; the piles of shoveled snow on either side rose higher and higher. Eventually, the snow was just too high to be any fun. When it’s hip high on an adult, you can imagine where it comes up to on a third grader.

By December it was routinely below zero (F) at night. (That’s -18C.) In our old, under-insulated house, when it gets that cold, the windows frost over completely. In the whole house, there was only one window you could see out of, and it belonged to the kitchen door. But what was there to look at? Snow, and more snow. The sub-zero cold did have one advantage. There’s a certain macho pleasure in calling the office, “I’m going to be in late this morning. It got down to 37 below last night (that’s -38C) and I can’t get the car started yet.” But that gets old fast.

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Decoy weather–an apt term. Somehow, once October is over, it’s hard to call it Indian Summer anymore. I have noticed around here that we consistently have one day in the first week of November that is warm and sunny. I always give the kids the day off from school then and have a general clean up the yard day. Anything we don’t want to get buried under snow has to get put away, and anything we want to find once it snows, like snow shovels and sleds, gets put in a more convenient location. We usually don’t get decoy weather again until January, which around these parts is known as the January Thaw. The snow all melts but the …

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