Cold Climate Gardening

Wyn recently commented elsewhere:

I live in zone 2 and am looking for a shade plant that is non-poisonous to pets for the north side of my fence. When I entered that info in google it sent me to this site. Lovely pictures and great info, unfortunately not really my zone. LOL.

Judging by my commenter’s email address, I’d say this gardener lived in Saskatchewan, and it’s not clear whether that’s Zone 2 on the Canadian map or the US one. Either way, it’s definitely colder than my neck of the woods. I told Wyn that even though I was in the balmy climate of USDA zone 4/5, many of my readers were in colder climates.

I …

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I spent my childhood in climates where the flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) flourished, and I loved its elegant simplicity. When we moved here, I was dismayed but not surprised when my new neighbor told me that she had twice planted a flowering dogwood in a protected corner of her house, and twice it had died. Having just endured my first thirty-degrees-below-zero-Fahrenheit winter, no, I was not surprised.

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And what is retirement for, if not to make a few dreams come true? And what is a garden for, if not to satisfy the longings of your heart?

I have learned a lot from watching the garden of my best garden buddy, Bub, develop. The most satisfying garden, for the gardener and for others, is one that grows out of the desires of your heart. Bub’s garden is filled with hellebores, daylilies, and even trees that she grew from seed, musical instruments she can play, birds, chipmunks, and squirrels she can watch and feed, and a labyrinth through which she walks.

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Look at the hardiness map for Minnesota and you will see that the whole state is in zone 4 or colder. The Minnesota State Horticultural Society, which publishes Northern Gardener Magazine, is devoted to helping northern gardeners. If you join the society, besides the magazine you will get borrowing privileges at the society’s library (they mail you the books!), as well as other benefits that would mostly appeal to local members. Or, you can subscribe to the magazine alone.

This month’s issue featured an article on hardy magnolias, as well as a northern native (bloodroot in this issue), an article on hardier …

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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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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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