ShareThisThose of us who live in cold-weather climates know how long and anguishing the wait for spring can be. In early February, long before the first flowers begin to grow in Kansas, I start hunting through my garden, pining for anything green.
If you, too, live in a part of the country where it's still too early to dig in your garden, take heart. My garden gurus, Gloria and Lynda, who have turned my dirt patch into a paradise, offer a few ways you can get gardening even when it still feels like winter outside.
CLEAN UP: Get out those gardening gloves, sharpen your spade and dust off that rake so the next time you're blessed with an unseasonably warm day you'll be ready to do some spring cleaning in your flowerbeds, raking up dead leaves and spent blossoms and laying down fresh mulch.
Lynda says that early spring, before everything begins to leaf out, is the ideal time for pruning. That's when she calls her tree service to remove dead tree branches and gets busy with the pruning sheers, trimming and thinning out her shrubs.
Gloria also suggests using the early spring weeks to make necessary repairs to your garden's hardscape -- the walls, borders and fences that give your outdoor space its structure. Level stepping-stones that wobble, fix that broken gate hinge and repair birdhouses that were beaten about by winter storms.
If you plan to have container gardens this summer, pull out the pots you've stored away for winter, give them a good cleaning, put them into position on your porch and fill them with potting soil so as soon as the frost date in your region passes, all you'll need to do is insert the flowers.
SPLURGE ON A SHOWPLACE PIECE: Every spring, Gloria invests in one beautiful ornament for her garden, a new piece that will give her outdoor space style or lend it a bit of whimsy. One year it was an oversized lantern. She placed the lantern atop an iron garden urn on her front porch, then filled it with a small garden statue and faux spring green. The effect was simply stunning.
How about getting a fountain or birdbath? Have you always wanted an arbor at your garden's entrance, covered with climbing roses? Maybe a unique or stately tuteur for your clematis or morning glories to climb on?
Through the years, I've invested in a few pieces of antique garden statuary and positioned them so they peek out from the ivy and hostas in my courtyard, a surprise awaiting the careful observer. If you're adding statuary, be careful not to overdo it. Just a piece or two is all you need to bring sophisticated style to your garden.
I'm also a huge fan of large iron garden urns. I keep one at the center of my brick patio, where it serves as an arresting focal point. Every spring, Gloria and Lynda plant it with a different small shrub, which they transplant into my garden at the end of the season.
BRING ON THE FLOWERS: To hold you over until your garden bursts into color, why not fill a beautiful planter with cold-tolerant annuals that do well in your region, such as pansies, stocks, dianthus, snapdragons and kale?
Or do what I do and cheat by filling your home with faux spring branches and blooms. I felt redeemed when I found out that master gardeners Gloria and Lynda do the same thing in their homes. Lynda fills the large glass vase on her coffee table with long, leggy artificial branches that mimic what's blooming outside, from forsythia to cherry blossoms. You can also decorate with fake forced bulbs, like narcissus, mini-daffodils or hyacinths, which look so real you want to sniff them. Put these little gems on your dining table, windowsill, mantel or side table to give them instant spring cheer.
(Mary Carol Garrity is the proprietor of three successful home-furnishings stores and the author of several best-selling books on home decorating. Write her at nellhills(at)mail.lvnworth.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com.)
STYLE AT HOME
