Falling in Love (With Your Garden)
Let's be honest—gardens can sometimes be difficult to love. But the best loves require patience, understanding, and getting a little bit dirty.
It’s time to fall in love with your garden again. This month, which can feel so much like the winter of our discontent with its gray skies, cold ground, and bare branches, is actually the beginning of a love story. Think of it as a romantic comedy where, true to the formula, you and your garden meet and … you don’t like each other at all! Or maybe you like each other a lot but you just can’t seem to hook up—it’s all bad timing and missed connections. You’re full of fresh ideas and lusting after new plants that you want to install. But your old plants are demanding your attention and whispering “Prune me, baby, prune me!” Can true love ever be found here?
Spoiler alert: The answer is “yes!” First, though, there will be obstacles to overcome (late frosts, battering rains, damaging winds) and misleading crossed wires (those inevitable days of false spring). New characters will be introduced. Some will flash briefly across the screen, never to return (annual flowers and vegetables), and others will be around for a long, long time (bare-root roses and perennials). Some will brighten the scene and add promise; others will seem needy and difficult and complicate your life.
This month the garden can feel like it’s nothing but complications and contradictions when it’s really just the natural way of things. The lush, romantic garden we imagined and the fresh start we mapped out just last month is meeting cold reality and the result can be many things—soggy, wind-ravaged, frost-bitten—but not necessarily romantic.
No doubt, there will be clean-up to do this month, but there will also be new plants to install and old plants to reshape. In the hazy light of February we can begin to see the garden in our mind’s eye start to unfold on the ground. Clarity comes, however, when we realize that winter is not a problem to be solved but a necessary shift in the garden’s energy.
And just when it seems that nothing could flourish under such daunting conditions, buds will swell and break, bulbs will send up green shoots, and the landscape will be made anew.
In other words, love.*
Valentine’s Day Garden Gift Ideas
If you’re looking for a few last-minute Valentine’s Day gifts for the sweet ones in your life, here are a few garden-related goodies that caught my eye:
Handheld 6-inch Mini Chainsaw: Love means never having to say “I told you you’d be sore after doing all that pruning!” I consider a mini chainsaw a must-have tool in the garden. They have a lot more guts than you’d expect; produce good, clean cuts; and save you a lot of pain and swearing. You won’t regret getting one. Available online from Amazon (with Amazon Prime two-day shipping) and other retailers.
Old-Fashioned Bleeding Hearts (Dicentra) Bareroot Plant: Although a naked bareroot may not seem like a “wow” kind of gift, the sprays of dangling red hearts that this plant will produce year after year make it a gift that keeps on giving. For a slightly more dramatic look, there is also Burning Hearts Bleeding Heart (Dicentra). Available from Spring Hills Nurseries through Home Depot and other retailers.
The Bride Bachelor Buttons Seeds from Botanical Interests: For the bride-to-be (or maybe for the love interest who isn’t getting the hint), these snowy white flowers are a lovely way to send a message. The fringey white flowers will attract pollinators but deer will avoid them. They’re even edible! Available online and at many nurseries.
Glass Birdbath: I love the peacock pattern in this glass birdbath as well as the pronged metal stake that should hold it securely in place. Available with overnight shipping with Amazon Prime.
Love Lies Bleeding Amaranth Seeds from Renee’s Garden Seeds: For the overly dramatic or lovelorn person in your life, these heirloom seeds will produce lots of long, deep red tassels of blooms that look great in the garden and add a stunning touch to floral arrangements.
Happy Valentine’s Day (a few days early) to all!
* The essay above is a reprise of something I wrote for my book California Month-by-Month Gardening.
I loved this post. Exactly how I feel.