Gardeners may swill champagne along with the rest of the world at 12:01 on January 1, but most of us don\u2019t truly feel the New Year\u2019s spirit until the temperature starts to rise and the first snowdrops, crocuses and winter aconite pop out of the still-frozen ground.\u00a0 Even if a bit of snow lingers in the forecast, we look for outdoor chores while exercising our credit cards by making plant and equipment orders.<\/p>\n
Yesterday I clipped four shivering snowdrops and brought them into the house just to get that New Year\u2019s spirit working.\u00a0 They responded by opening their petals wide and exuding a beautiful fragrance.\u00a0 That was enough for me.\u00a0 I am off and running now, making \u201cNew Year\u2019s\u201d resolutions for the garden.\u00a0 Here they are:<\/p>\n
Spin the Color Wheel<\/b><\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b>Some people are meticulous planners who sketch their gardens in advance or plot the landscape down to the square inch on graph paper of a computer screen.\u00a0 I admire them, but I am not one of them.\u00a0 The \u201cbones\u201d of my garden were organized long ago.\u00a0 Now I sometimes jot suggestions to myself and post them in prominent places.\u00a0 But I am a romantic and more often than not, I fall in love with certain plants or plant groups and purchase them, figuring that I will find a place to put them at the appropriate time.\u00a0 This makes for a constantly changing garden, but not a particularly cohesive one.<\/p>\n
I know my basic gardening MO is not going to change, but this year I find myself longing for greater cohesion.\u00a0 I\u2019ll get it by introducing some color discipline.\u00a0 This won\u2019t be achieved by large-scale transplantation because I know I don\u2019t have that in me either.\u00a0 Instead, I am going to fine-tune the color palettes of the various beds.\u00a0 One of the easiest fine-tuning tricks is to calm down the most chaotic areas by inserting groups of white-flowered plants into the beds, creating continuity and freshness.\u00a0 I love white cosmos, which are easy to grow in sunny spots and self-seed if they are happy.\u00a0 White New Guinea impatiens provide the same visual relief in shadier places.<\/p>\n
Blues and their color wheel opposites, yellows, have always made me feel good.\u00a0 If I focus on blue as the main color range in most of the beds, adding more blue-toned plants, I will enhance cohesion with very little extra effort. \u00a0\u00a0Where blues or blue-purples already predominate, I can add in yellows or peachy-yellows as accent colors.\u00a0 I love the double snapdragons \u2018Chantilly Yellow\u2019 and \u2018Chantilly Peach\u2019, both of which are exceptionally easy to grow.<\/p>\n
The color focus makes room for the inevitable\u2014lots of love at first sight in garden centers\u2014without complete loss of direction.\u00a0 It may actually save me money.\u00a0 Stranger things have happened.<\/p>\n
Good Grooming<\/b><\/p>\n
Mature gardens, like mature people should always aspire to good grooming.\u00a0 Many of our grandmothers said wise things like, \u201cYou can\u2019t change crow\u2019s feet, but you can certainly do something about your haircut.\u201d\u00a0 I ignored that advice at the time it was given because I couldn\u2019t imagine being old enough to have crow\u2019s feet, but it has proved to be true.\u00a0 Likewise, some of your garden mistakes may be long-lived, but you can always improve the landscape by cutting the grass, keeping the shrubs pruned and mulching the beds.<\/p>\n
This does not mean using a builder\u2019s level to ensure perfection when you trim the privet, unless doing so makes you happy.\u00a0 It means trimming the privet before the neighbors start giving you funny looks and keeping it neat thereafter.\u00a0 If using the hedge trimmer for long periods of time gives you palsy-like tremors; tackle the chore in short bursts.\u00a0 If you hate such chores and have the money, hire someone else to do them.<\/p>\n
I used to loathe edging the beds and borders.\u00a0 My garden is full of edges and the number of linear feet in need of edging always seemed daunting.\u00a0 On top of that, I have never had a power tool or a strapping garden helper to ease the job.\u00a0 Since the only thing changeable about the situation is my attitude, it is comforting to feel that attitude evolving.\u00a0 This year I vow that the edging will take priority over my decades-long hobby of making excuses for not doing it.\u00a0 As with hedge trimming, short bursts of activity work wonders.\u00a0 Ten minutes with the edging tool is enough to edge about ten linear feet properly.\u00a0 Unlike grass, edges do not grow back right away, so the satisfaction of doing the job lasts for more than a week or two.\u00a0 Crisp edging says \u201cgood garden grooming\u201d like nothing else.<\/p>\n
As always, the key with garden grooming is that you are not doing it to be virtuous; you are doing it because it makes you feel good.<\/p>\n
I recommend spring garden resolutions, great and small.\u00a0 Channel the energy you feel from the lengthening days and the warmer temperatures.\u00a0 The efforts may minimal, but the satisfaction will always be enormous.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gardeners may swill champagne along with the rest of the world at 12:01 on January 1, but most of us don\u2019t truly feel the New Year\u2019s spirit until the temperature starts to rise and the first snowdrops, crocuses and winter aconite pop out of the still-frozen ground.\u00a0 Even if a bit of snow lingers in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3,5],"tags":[1135,1134,476,506,540],"class_list":["post-1289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","category-winter","tag-blue-plants","tag-color-wheel-gardens","tag-garden-chores","tag-seasonal-gardening","tag-spring-gardening"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1289"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1290,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions\/1290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}