UNSEASONABLE WEATHER
When I take stock of the current state of my garden, I realize that this may just be the Year of Perpetual Bloom. English garden writers have been bragging about their year-round flowers for decades, if not centuries, but those of us in the northeastern United States have never had that luxury. Now, thanks to Global Warming and/or other climate-related developments, we may at last be able to brag like the British. Of course this will be faint comfort if a day arrives when many of our gardens and homes lie submerged under water from the melted polar ice cap, but while we are cutting our emissions and switching to alternate energy forms, we can at least enjoy the blossoms. While we do that, we can also try to figure out how to cope with plants that are refusing to go dormant, breaking dormancy way too early, or showing other signs of unseasonable activity.
Right now my garden is a mess because the press of business kept me from completing the fall clean-up chores. When I go on my daily inspection tour I try to indulge in a measure of self-forgiveness for that omission, so that I can appreciate the twenty-five fat buds on the Helleborus niger or Christmas rose. And if that isn’t enough to relieve the January doldrums, my Jasminum nudiflorum shrub has sprouted a nice crop of forsythia-like yellow blossoms. The other day I cut a few small sprigs for the house, and gave thanks for the fact that I was too lazy to rip the whole plant out when its wayward growth habits began to really annoy me last year.
Like everyone else, I have heard the news stories about the lone Washington, D.C. cherry tree that decided to bloom in January. My garden is full of crocuses and narcissus that seem to think it’s appropriate to emerge from the ground and shoot upward. I have heard reports of lilies doing the same thing, and one of my fellow walking enthusiasts even saw a daffodil in bloom.
What can you do? First of all, you have to admit that there are some things that simply cannot be changed. Every since man became a gardener, he has had to deal with the vagaries of weather. Thomas Jefferson made a lifetime habit of recording his observations about the weather and its effect on his fruits, vegetables and ornamental plants. In western New York when I was growing up the senior citizens used to talk about a year in the late nineteenth century when snow fell in every single month and there was no summer. Our plants rot when it’s too wet and wither when it’s too dry. Trees blow over in windstorms and even the toughest leaves can be shredded by a ten minute hailstorm. You may control conglomerates or empires or even some of the electronic devices in your home, but you cannot control Mother Nature. She’s less conscious of pleas, threats and suggestions than a teenager.
The one thing everyone can do is mulch. No matter what the temperature, mulch insulates the plants against sudden changes. This will come in particularly handy if we do have a sudden burst of wintery weather and extremely cold temperatures. When such an event is in the forecast, you can heap up extra mulch around tender plants that have advanced beyond where they should be at this time of the year. Just be sure and rake away some of that surplus mulch when the weather warms up again. In the alternate, you can also cover tender plants. A couple of seasons ago I did this with some adopted tree peonies that didn’t arrive until early December. Cold weather was forecast less than ten days after I got them in the ground, and I knew the plants were barely settled, much less established. I covered each one with a large plastic plant pot, and put a heavy rock on top of each pot to keep it from blowing away. When the warm weather returned I uncovered the tree peonies, and I am pleased to report that even the smallest survived the ordeal. As an added bonus I got a lot of exercise running in and out of the house to check on them.
If you have a large garden, you can’t possibly cover everything. Well established, healthy plants have the best chance of surviving typical unseasonal northeastern weather–for example a blizzard with forty mile-an-hour winds followed immediately by a week of temperatures in the low sixties. Save your energies for plants that have a high sentimental or monetary value, or are in particularly exposed positions. Anything situated right by a house or other large, warm structure will probably survive a sudden cold snap.
You will have to admit the possibility that your spring garden will be less than optimal when spring finally rolls around. You can always fill the gaps with the inexpensive pansies that the mega-merchants put out around Valentine’s Day and keep out until the summer flowers roll in. And, of course, you can also default to the all-forgiving phrase that smart gardeners have used for centuries–“If only you could have been here last year at this time. The garden was perfect.”