GARDEN FITNESS

If you are dreaming about making a new garden or improving an existing one next year, now is the time to get moving.

Don’t wait until next spring when everyone is rushing into nurseries and big box stores, filling their cars and trucks with plants and then trying to book time with busy landscape pros who feel like gerbils going round and round on wheels that never stop turning.

Just writing about it makes me sigh with false fatigue.

It may seem counterintuitive to install plants just as they are going dormant for the winter until you consider their life cycles and our climate.

Diane Meucci, co-owner of Gardens OyVey in Arlington, likens climatic conditions in the MidSouth to being like a rainforest in the winter and a desert in the summer.

“So do we plant as the desert looms or when the rainforest is coming?” she asked those attending her lecture on fall gardening basics last week at Dixon Gallery and Gardens.

Plants are so much happier when installed in the fall because their roots have a chance to adapt to new surroundings when they have adequate moisture and when they are not working hard to produce growth above the ground.

“Planting in the spring is like putting a newborn in the middle of the highway and expecting it to live,” Meucci said.

You will probably need to give new plants extra water during dry spells for the first year and then occasionally during the next two. After that, they should be able to survive without it except during extended periods of extreme heat and dryness.

Soil preparation is important to gardening success, say Meucci and Mary Iberg, a master gardener and landscape pro who also gave a talk on “Gardening 101” last week at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library.

Before doing any digging, dial 811 to have your underground utility lines located and marked. It is a free service that many professional landscapers require before they start their work.

Like all gardening tasks, there are several acceptable ways to prepare soil.

Step 1 is usually clearing the area of existing turf, weeds or other vegetation by using a weed-killing product like Roundup or scraping the plants off.

Iberg recommends deep tilling or spading to about 16 inches; Meucci goes for a more shallow tilling about 6 inches deep.

Both recommend working in 2 to 3 inches of organic amendments such as compost (Iberg) or finely ground pine bark with a topping of composted cow manure (Meucci).

Both recommend initially mulching around new plants with 2 to 3 inches of hardwood mulch (Meucci), pine straw (Iberg) or any other mulch that will decompose and enrich the soil.

That layer of mulch helps hold in moisture and smother weeds. Visually, it’s a finishing touch that unifies various elements in a bed.

After the first year, add about an inch of mulch annually, keeping it away from the stems and trunks.

Do not put a “volcano” of mulch against tree trunks no matter how many times you might see them in commercial landscapes.

Mulching against tree bark promotes rotting, which allows insects and diseases to take up residence in the trunk.

Spread mulch around trees in a doughnut shape with a void or hole around the tree trunk and a low wide circle of mulch around the hole.

Because tilling and turning the soil often bring dormant weed seeds to the surface where they can grow, Iberg uses a product like Preen that inhibits seed germination. But don’t use it if you plan to sow the seeds of desirable plants directly on the soil because they won’t germinate either.

If you are totally new to gardening or to gardening in the Mid-South, memorize this fact: We’re in Zone 7 for plant hardiness.

Meucci points out that every 10 to 30 years we get a major frost that will kill or set back plants that normally are perfectly happy here, such as crape myrtles and camellias.

She recommends choosing plants labeled as hardy from Zone 6 to Zone 8 for extra winter hardiness, or better still, from those that will live from frosty Zone 5 to sizzling Zone 9.

Read and keep the labels that come with your plants for future reference.

But be aware that the estimated size of a perennial or shrub on a tag is usually smaller than what it reaches here.

“If it says a plant will get 3 feet wide, plan on it reaching at least 4 feet in width,” Iberg said. Space them accordingly unless you like pruning and/or moving big plants around.

During her talk, Meucci made some hydrangea recommendations:

Native forms of hydrangeas such as the white Annabelle and oakleaf can be counted on to have flowers every year.

“I like the big, bosomy, pendulous oakleaf Snowflake which goes from white to pink,” she said. “And the voluptuous, also bosomy white Annabelle.”

She admits there is nothing better than blue and pink hydrangeas when they bloom. “But they bring a lot of heartache when they don’t.”

If you have to have them — and many of us do — choose reblooming varieties that will produce some flowers even when late frosts kill the buds on the tip of the stems.

The fastest-growing, most-likely-to-live climbing “hydrangea” is Moonlight, whose botanical name is Schizophragma hydrangeoides.

It’s not really fast-growing, but it does climb higher sooner than the other vining type, Hydrangea anomala.