Waste not winter
There are plenty of things to do in your garden during cold-weather months
Once the usual fall garden tasks are addressed — leaf raking, bulb planting, clearing of spent annuals — the yard warrior and avid gardener alike retreat indoors for the long winter.
Please come out of the cave.
The period between now and March offers a chance to take charge of the garden outside the demands of the growing season in a productively unhurried way.
Yes, there will be days when freezing temperatures, ice and snow will make the idea of outdoor work absurd.
But there will be plenty of weekends ahead when gardening will be not only feasible but also pleasurable — surely better than a buggy, 90-degree day in July. Moreover, this offseason approach will give you a gift not available during the gardening year: time. Time to clear old, overgrown vegetation, time to move existing plants and install new ones, time to fix the gate or fence, time to improve the soil.
There may be periods when a deep freeze will turn the ground to concrete, but even then you can gather materials for projects, deal with above-ground work or simply set about evaluating areas of the garden that need refreshing.
Offseason gardening, as I see it, falls into four areas.
Horticulture
The idea of “putting the garden to bed” or cutting back anything that looks dead or untidy isn’t necessary and robs much of the natural character of the winter garden. It also deprives birds of seed and beneficial insects of habitat. You should pull all the old vegetable garden waste and now-dead tender plants, but don’t cut back spent perennial stalks and grasses until they are beaten down and ugly.
Leaves can be mown into shreds and left on the lawn, mown and gathered for mulch growing beds, collected in a pile or simply left in areas where they aren’t doing any harm. The one thing you shouldn’t do is put them out for collection. They are a valuable amendment, feeding the beneficial organisms in healthy soil.
You should, however, bag fallen diseased leaves — the foliage with black spot, mildew, leaf blights — to minimize problems next year.
Once the cold has set in and plants are fully dormant, they can be pruned. In winter, the branch structure of deciduous shrubs and ornamental and fruit trees is much easier to see.
Work on big trees is hazardous and best left to professionals, but even the pruning neophyte can remove the odd branch of a small tree or shrub that has grown in the way of the path or the patio.
Overgrown shrubs or hedges can and should be transformed with a pair of lopping shears. It’s amazing how much real estate you can reclaim with a few good chops, and how you can transform an area from dense and gloomy to open and breezy.
There are choices, so weigh them first. You can reduce the height and mass of a shrub through selective pruning and still keep its natural outline. You can cut it back hard a few inches above the ground and hope it will re-sprout. (This presents some risk of killing the plant, but chances are it will return bushier.) The third option is to move it; shallow-rooted plants such as azaleas and boxwood are happy to relocate. The last option is to remove a shrub. This can be laborious in deeprooted plants such as forsythia — but the additional payoff is in reducing root competition for neighboring and replacement plants.
Construction
A garden is framed and defined by structures, including paving, fencing, arbors and walls, not to mention the home and outbuildings. Whether you want to add new structures or repair or replace existing ones, think of what you can accomplish before the chaos of April and May.
This winter, my list includes re-painting an iron fence, replacing rotten boards, retaining growing beds and adding rabbit fencing around a vegetable plot.
Setting posts and laying brick or stone will be dependent on workable soil, and painting and staining will require a period of mild temperatures. Untying and laying down rambling roses and other climbers as you fix their supports is far easier when the plants are pruned and dormant.
Evaluation, planning
A garden is at its most exposed and revealing in the winter. This is the time to look at it with an objectivity that may be missing in the growing season.
Just as woody plants outgrow their spaces, grasses and perennials peter out after a few years. Sometimes a planted area is still effective but you are ready for something fresh. A makeover may be something as small as a 6-foot-square bed by the front door or as large as an entire side of the property. Start small.
This is the time to identify new plants to try, find which mail-order nurseries carry them, and get your order in early so you get the specific plant or quantities of plants you want come spring.
The offseason is the moment to attend classes, talks and seminars that will broaden your knowledge and get the inspirational sap flowing. Check your local botanic garden and county extension agents for winter programs. State horticultural societies also sponsor symposiums.
Enjoyment
Savoring the winter garden and working in it are not mutually exclusive, but you should set aside some time to be in the garden and receptive to the season’s subtle beauty.
One way of enhancing the experience of the winter garden is to plant more treasures of the season. No garden should be without hellebores or a daphne or two, winterberry hollies and witch hazels. The bark of certain trees looks stunning in winter, including paperbark maples, birches, beeches, magnolias and stewartias.