Getting Started with Spring Gardening

Are you starting to feel it? It’s that pulse we gardeners experience as spring comes near. Things that appeared to be dormant on the surface, have been busy getting their roots and bulbs ready for encore performances.

We check our mailboxes for seed catalogues sporting the latest hybrids and old favorites, imagining how they might look in our own gardens. As the danger of frost diminishes and days get warmer, we can begin cleaning out old beds and forming new ones, preparing the soil for new arrivals. It’s a bit like getting a nursery ready before bringing home a new baby. I’m glad that nurseries are called that; one thinks of little baby plants being cared for, before adoptive parents come to claim them.

Having recently moved into a house I bought as a “short sale” that was in rough shape, I’m planning a new garden. An old one simply doesn’t exist. I’ve been observing the light to see which beds are in continuous shade or sun and find that since the house doesn’t face in any definite direction, it’s more complicated.  This means that the front of the house gets no sun in the winter and almost all-day sun in the summer. One must be creative in selection of plant material.

Before planting, I dug in some Miracle Grow garden soil and with each plant I mixed in some Osmocote, a time-release plant food that feeds for about three to four months. To get some color, I popped in some azaleas, calla lilies, Santa Barbara daisies, Iceland poppies and primroses. In the truly shady spots, I put in baby tears moss and ferns. I’m just compulsive enough to keep deadheading, encouraging the flowers to keep producing. Now that I’ve done that to reassure the neighbors that I’m not a flake, I have time to develop a bigger plan.

To get a jump on spring, while you’re waiting for your perennials to come back, plug in few annuals that will bloom nicely for a couple of months. With very little effort, you will generate some excitement for “coming attractions” and keep up morale in your garden.

Don’t neglect your interior garden, the garden of your soul. The Bible is your handbook for planting new thoughts, new disciplines and new ways to model you life after Christ’s.

Romans 12:2 says, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will –his good pleasing and perfect will.”

Your gardening friend,

Marianne Farrier