Cold Climate Gardening

The temperatures are still dropping into the teens every night (last night’s low: 17.5F or -8C) and even when the high hits 40F (4C) the brisk wind makes it feel chillier. But at least a hurried stroll around the premises is now rewarded with signs that Spring is slowly making inroads in Winter’s territory. These crocuses started blooming yesterday, but despite the sunshine they just can’t bring themselves to open fully.

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Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures
Maybe you can’t see it (go ahead and click on the photo for a closer look), but my eyes can see that the trees on the hillside have a definite reddish cast to them. This is reckoned as the first sign of spring here in Purdyville, or more properly, the sign that enables us to hold on for the next month of rough weather, before spring really comes.

The reddish cast is from the buds swelling on the trees. …

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And though one has begun to search for signs of spring almost since January, and to receive them, like postcards sent on a long voyage to home, it is with the greening of the grass that spring has, finally, certainly arrived.

It wasn’t until I read A Year at North Hill : Four Seasons in a Vermont Garden by Wayne Winterrowd and Joe Eck that I made the connection between the greening of the grass and the frost finally being out of the ground. …

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This was the view out my kitchen door yesterday morning. We had rain which changed to snow as the day progressed. Because everything was wet, the heavy snow stuck to everything. When the wind picked up, the snow didn’t blow off the branches but added weight to the force of the wind. Consequently branches were falling everywhere.

We were without power for twelve hours. The “nice” thing about a snowstorm at this time of the year is you know it won’t stay around. Although the roads were snow covered …

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The standard advice for pruning spring-blooming shrubs is to prune them no later than two weeks after they’re done blooming. This is because most spring-flowering shrubs, at least, all those commonly grown, develop their flower buds on the previous year’s wood. So if you prune them in high summer, or autumn, you are cutting off the wood that has the next spring’s flowers.
However, it is far easier to see the structure of the shrub you are pruning in late winter, when the temperatures have moderated somewhat but the shrub hasn’t leafed out or started blooming yet. And, in the case of forsythia, you can bring the prunings indoors, stick them in a container of water, and, in about a week, have forsythia blooming in the house. These in the photo were cut about a week ago, on one of those nice days just before winter returned.

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Good things come to those who wait. At least ten years ago, I planted the first of these snowdrops lining the path to the Secret Garden. You will have to click on the photo to enlarge it in order to see them, because they are the ones way in the back, on the far side of the footbridge, looking no more than a white blob from this distance. They are the same snowdrops that you see in every header image, because they have been nice, substantial clumps for at least as long as we’ve owned a digital camera.

Since they were given to me by a friend,

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