Cold Climate Gardening

Brave the snow, get out of the house, and learn something new! Here are some gardener-worthy events coming up in my neck of the woods.
“CNY Blooms” –Spring 2007 will sprout up before you know it, and with it the blossoming of Syracuse’s flower and garden show, now known as “CNY Blooms”. Mark your planting calendar and get ready to enjoy this beautiful show, devoted exclusively to the world of flowers and gardening. It all starts blooming March 1st through the 4th, 2007, in the Convention Center at Oncenter, Syracuse. Hundreds of area landscapers and horticulturalists will be offering you the best of the season’s blooms. Interested in learning more about perennial flower gardens? Want to know more about creative outdoor structures or innovative patio designs? There will be seminars and presentations to help with your landscape plans. Adults-$9, Children 12 and under free. Discount coupons available at a Price Chopper store near you

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Sunday, October 8th, was a gorgeous autumn day, sunny and warm. I decided to go up the hill for a walk in the woods, camera in hand, and you get to share the results. (Be forewarned: this is an even longer than usual post.) But first, a little bit about where we’re going. Our family lives on 14 acres. It is a narrow slice of hillside, with our house near the road at the bottom of the hill and our land going uphill for about half a mile. Once upon a time, it was all forest. We figure our house was built sometime in the 1880s, so that’s probably about the time the trees were cleared for pasture, though it’s always been marginal land for grazing: not especially fertile acid clay, with a high water table that leaves many areas soggy during years of average rainfall. The forest has been growing back as the occupant before us (and maybe the one before him) gradually stopped mowing the areas furthest away from the house, though we still have a field of about 4 to 5 acres.

The field gets mowed yearly with a brush mower, which is also used to keep paths through the woods cleared enough so a suburban girl like me can pick her way without carrying a machete or getting lost. The path starts out in what I call the Secret Garden, which is an area closer to the house that reverted to trees early because it’s clearly too wet to mow. I have dreams of turning it into a native plant garden, but for now, that’s mostly all it is, an idea that, maybe someday . . . After meandering through the Secret Garden, the path starts going up, and threads through the hedgerow alongside the field before joining the woods proper.

Don’t these berries look ornamental? And the birds love them. Such is the recipe for disaster, for these are rose hips of the invasive Rosa multiflora. This shrub is growing on the bank of the seasonal brook that borders the northern side of our property, right before it narrows and becomes easy to cross at the top of a hill. As you cross the brook at this point, you can look back down the slope and watch the water spill over the rocks. I used to dream of sitting on a bridge and enjoying the view, which I would enhance with ferns and native flowers planted into the steep bank. But it took a mere decade for this little glen to fill up with the thorn-infested brambles, which I’ll have to remove before I can ever realize my dream, and I’ll have to be eternally vigilant ever after. Don of An Iowa Garden has been working on eradicating this shrub, and it sounds exhausting.

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Question: What do you do with fifteen acres? Answer: That’s a good question! My family and I have been working on the answer for over fifteen years. This probably won’t surprise you, but we seldom come up with the same answer. I wanted the area immediately around the house to be devoted to ornamental landscaping. We also had to decide about the location of poultry and livestock, the vegetable garden, and various play areas for the children. What, if anything, were we going to do with the field, and how were we going to maintain it? Did we want a pond? Where should it go? And what about the woods?

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