Gardens With A Personal Touch

I prefer to share articles I have written for limited publication sometime after they are released. Gardens With A Personal Touch appeared this winter in The North Star Monthly, a Danville, Vermont publication I admire. Covid-19 has changed many things but it will never change how important gardens are to us. In a time when we need calm from the storm, our gardens can help.Read on and think how to make your gardens more personal.

GARDENS WITH A PERSONAL TOUCH

A snowy morning here on the mountain above Peacham Pond. I’ve finally shaken off several weeks of a cold virus. The woodstove is going, the birds have been fed and it’s time to turn to garden thoughts. I read an article yesterday about a gardener who bought the house of her dreams and always wanted a row of Hyperion daylilies along the road out front. Hyperion is a wonderful daylily introduced in 1924. It’s +40” tall, a nice shade of yellow and it’s fragrant. Sixty feet of garden is a great deal of work so the woman started 10 feet at a time each year, turning the soil, removing the stones and roots and debris and then amending the soil to accommodate healthy plants, 30 inches on the center. The article included a picture of the finished garden and it was really impressive!

The message here comes with a suggestion that this time of winter is perfect for planning new gardens and improving upon those you already have growing. Garden catalogs have arrived in the mail and online catalogs have been updated. So grab a pad of paper and pen and map out what you have and what you want to create. Think in terms of adding a personal touch that is specifically yours. Think of adding items that will remind you and your visitors that this garden is really “you”. This can included new plants, shrubs or trees, anything vertical, bird houses or bird baths, stone features, a piece of pottery, a piece of garden art, a single garden bench or a set of garden furniture, an arbor or a trellis….or just a good cleaning out, soil amending and a few complimentary plants.

When folks visit the flower farm and say they would like some help picking out an assortment of plants for a new garden, the first question we ask is whether the garden space is already prepared.  If the whole thing is still a vision we explain we don’t want to sell plants if the garden isn’t prepared yet. Garden shortcuts never work and only create more work down the road. We also verify soil condition, whether the soil has ever been tested, sunlight, soil moisture/proximity to streams, ponds, seasonal water runoff, and visiting wildlife. When we hear plants or shrubs that other nursery and garden center staff have said “it should grow for you” we validate the temptation with reality and our experience. We encourage our “plan it, validate that it will be a success here and plant it once.” We have never been believers in “There’s never time to do it right but there’s always time to do it over.”

Think about pockets of spring bulbs that you always wanted but never got around to planting. Spring is the wrong time to plant spring bulbs but the right time to figure out where you want to plant them come fall, and then mark your calendar with a note to order or purchase bulbs in September. Consider primulas, the primroses you see almost year round now in grocery stores and garden centers, Vermont hardy perennials that begin in late spring and grow into summer. They often self-seed well and come in many colors and leaf types. The Japanese primroses work well at the perimeter of shade gardens and can be planted in moisture-retentive soils. They stand tall enough to offer a showy presence, especially after a couple years when they have started to make colorful colonies. Consider the penstemons, the salvias, the veronicas for a variety of heights, bloom and leaf colors as well as bloom times well into summer. Spend a little extra on brunneras and pulmonarias for leaves that offer excellence as attention getters even after the flowers have passed. Give hellebores a try for early spring color and forget about the notion that they are difficult to grow or won’t survive here. And consider saving a package of dill to sprinkle around your gardens in mid-spring. Dill plants are home to hoverflies which love to eat aphids. They also are a magnet to a variety of butterflies such as the tiger swallowtails. Add a package of Verbena bonariensis to your dill seed and the result will be 3.5-foot tall flower scapes with a wonderful blue color that all pollinators adore. And finally, if through the process you have questions, send us an email at vermontflowerfarm@outlook.com or call us at 802-426-3505 with questions. We’re always here to help you grow your green thumb!