How the library will make you a better gardener

The Lethbridge Public Library made me a better gardener. That, and the long winter.

You know those last 15 minutes of a long shift that take twice as long as normal minutes? That’s December to March for me. This last snowfall just about did me in. The silver lining is, when I can’t garden outside, I read about gardening.

To get through this past winter, I think I checked out every book and downloaded every magazine on gardening that the library owns.

And wow, was it ever a long winter. Luckily, the library has books by our local regional, provincial and federal gardening celebrities: Donna Balzer and Steven Biggs, Lyndon Penner, Lois Hole, Sara Williams, June Flanagan, Frankie Flowers, Liz Primeau, Laura Peters and Marjorie Harris. Balzer wins for best gardening title: “Gardening for Goofs.”

Soon I was ignoring the snowy wasteland outside, and became lost in a world of gardens. I had no idea there were so many kinds of gardens: home gardens, rose gardens, winter gardens (I did not read those books), natural gardens, xeriscape gardens, prairie gardens, prairie-style gardens, native prairie gardens, prairie urban gardens, northern prairie gardens. The adjectives were becoming as numerous as the ones describing some of our new fiction genres: romantic, historical, paranormal, new adult fiction.

Amazingly, not every gardener agreed on what to do or how to do it!

As winter stretched onwards, I read about the work of Elliot Coleman and Carol Deppe in the United States. Coleman developed great techniques for gardening and harvesting vegetables in winter from his Zone 5 property (I skipped over those chapters). I enjoyed Deppe’s humour and writing style. Her easy recipes using her homegrown potatoes won me over. I think we ate potatoes for supper for a week.

As winter continued, I had to start reading internationally. I started to fantasize about Charles Dowdings’ Somerset gardens. I started stalking him online — well, not really stalking, he does have a website, and a blog, and a YouTube channel, and, well, Google Earth does happen to show where his gardens are…

Thank goodness spring has arrived before things got weird. And while I have returned my books, started my seedlings, and put my energy into turning the compost pile, I will admit I learned a great deal through my winter reading and am looking forward to applying that to my garden this season.

I wish you all green abundance and if that doesn’t work, we’ve got lots of books at the library on how to be a better gardener.