Every year there is a moment in February when the urge to garden hits me with a vengeance. That moment has arrived. Now I have to decide what do to about it.
This winter has given our part of the world weeks of mild, gray weather, followed by one bad snowstorm, followed by a short but severe cold snap. During the mild gray weather snowdrops emerged and hellebores fattened up their buds. Three weeks ago, when all of those early bloomers were submerged under several feet of snow, I shoveled resolutely and wondered if the flowers could withstand the onslaught.
Now that the cold snap has abated and the snow is fast melting away, I realize that I should have had more faith. The snowdrops look as if they didn’t even notice the so-called “blizzard” that submerged them under a frosty blanket. The hellebore leaves appear a bit more bedraggled than they did before foul weather set in, but the buds are fine. If we have a single mild, sunny day, they will open their petals wide to reward any brave/insane early pollinators in the neighborhood. I generally clip off the tattered old hellebore leaves anyway, so if the weather continues to be good, the plants will look as if they just tumbled out of the pages of one of the glossier garden catalogs.
The melting snow also reveals an ugly truth–I neglected the fall garden clean-up. The spent aster stalks and hydrangea heads that might have provided architectural interest in November are now battered, blackened and broken. The seedheads that topped those stalks have long since emptied, providing food for the birds or the beginnings of the next generation of self-sown plants. Nothing in the garden looks particularly appealing and my neighbors probably think it is time for radical action before the remnants of my landscape lower the tone of the neighborhood.
Sap does not actually rise in people the way it does in some trees, but something similar happens to many gardeners as light returns after the Winter Solstice and glimpses of mild weather provide a taste of things to come. For some people this “rising sap syndrome” inspires orgies of catalog and internet browsing. I do plenty of that, but yearn for something more active. This urge becomes more pronounced as I count up the chores that need doing, including general clean-up, leaf raking and an abundance of pruning.
But in gardening, as in medicine, the first principle is always to do no harm. I try to remember that as the first pangs of gardening fever sweep over me in late winter and I choose among potential outdoor chores.
The ground is still frozen, so walking in the beds won’t compact the soil. The temperatures, at least at the moment, are comfortable enough to make outdoor work bearable or even pleasant. I won’t have the distraction of planting and weeding to worry about, because the garden center pallets are still bare and even the most tenacious chickweed and onion grass know better than to sprout this soon. I can focus on tidying.
General clean-up cannot possibly harm the garden right now, unless that clean-up involves removing winter mulches, which are still providing protection for vulnerable plants and insulation for the beds. I am reasonably sure that I could do clean-up for about a month without ever thinking of moving mulch around, so my garden will be safe.
Pruning is a little trickier. The pundits weigh in on this subject every year, advising gardeners to leave spring flowering plants alone, for fear of lopping off the buds that will eventually turn into blooms. This rule also applies to late spring/early summer bloomers, like traditional “mophead” hydrangeas. It is fine to prune out dead wood right now and shape plants, but save real pruning until the plants have shed their spent petals.
My front garden is home to a mastodon-like flowering quince that I allowed to grow unchecked last year. The pink and white flowers are lovely, but the whole plant needs to be tamed and reduced in size. I could trim away half the shrub’s thorny branches and still have a good flower display in six or eight weeks’ time. If the good weather holds and I finish the worst of the clean-up, I’ll take it on.
Of course, the operative words are “if the good weather holds.” Generally when I make bold plans for the garden, the good weather ends abruptly. It doesn’t matter. An hour or two in the garden now will work wonders for me, even if it does absolutely nothing for the landscape.