Not everyone gets to say this: my son wrote and illustrated a book for my birthday, and you can buy a copy for yourself!

It started out as two pages of a calendar. He didn’t finish it in time for my birthday, so he printed out copies of what he had completed so I could get an idea of what was coming.

But a calendar is only good for one year. And I found the first two illustrations so intriguing that I asked him to write out the story behind them. Little did I know, there was no story! He made the illustrations to show the weather and seasonal characteristics of each month, and put the man in each one for interest. I couldn’t imagine making such fascinating images without having a story in one’s head. But as my son explains

I had made twelve illustrations that weren’t even primarily designed to tell a story, and now I had to retroactively paste a story on top of them. All the things a story needs—tension, conflict, plot development­—were nowhere to be found in the drawings. I had to find a way to include these elements in the story, while following the course set by drawings which lacked them!

What my son came up with was a horticultural fable, in which the old man searches for a rare, possibly mythical plant in hopes of making a name for himself.

The old man’s travels take him through landscapes breathtaking, forbidding, and otherworldly by turns, and his exploration of this mythical land parallels an inner transformation he did not anticipate.

It’s a picture book for adults (and children with large vocabularies). Any gardener who is fascinated by tales of plant collecting or determined to grow plants no one else is growing will enjoy this book. Children will pore over the illustrations even if the vocabulary of a scholarly old man is a bit above them.

My son published this under a pseudonym. Why? I’m not quite sure. But he has other projects in the works that are very different in scope and style, and I think he didn’t want to have his name associated with this. He only made it available to the general public because I (and several of his friends) thought it deserved a wider audience. There is a free excerpt at the link below if you want to check it out.

The Cindervale Pearl makes a great gift for armchair adventurers and plant lovers alike. Available in hardcover, paperback, and pdf from https://bit.ly/Cindervale.

Moving Plants Out of Harm’s Way Before Construction Starts

A year ago last March, I learned that renovations were planned for our home. The kitchen was going to be bumped out onto the deck, so that it was even with the screened porch. The screened porch was going to be upgraded to a three-season room. And the deck surrounding it all was going to be pushed out into the garden beds I referred to as the Deck Alcove Bed and Deck West Bed. And when was this going to happen?

June.

June! I thought about all the plants in that garden–and I also thought about how construction projects never start when they say they’re going to start–and I came up with three principles to guide me through the upheaval.

1) Be Philosophical

You will lose plants, no matter how hard you try to save them all. But hey, some plants die every year, anyway. If you don’t try to save any of them, it’s guaranteed they will all die. If you can save some, you’re that much ahead of the game. Furthermore, every plant that dies is an opportunity to try a new plant, and this renovation project is an opportunity to design a new garden.

2) Be Strategic

Or should I say, practice triage? Some people would avert their eyes during construction, and assess the damage from workers’ feet and equipment when it was all over. But I am not one of those people. So: what reasons are there for rescuing plants, and which reason is the most important? And where are you going to put them? I’ll discuss where to put them in a little bit, but here are my criteria for saving plants.

1. It’s hard to replace–rare in commerce
2. Someone gave it to me or special provenance (eg. I grew it from seed/cuttings)
3. It would be expensive to replace, especially at its current size/maturity
4. I just love it!

But also realize that while you are saving plants, you are spending time. If you’re rescuing plants to save money, how much is your time worth? What will you not be doing, because you’re digging up plants instead?

3) Be Flexible

Roll with the punches. Think outside the box. Don’t worry, be happy. All those clichés have a kernel of truth. Having developed a plan for what to save first, there will be obstacles and interruptions to that plan. Try to not freak out about this.

Where were the plants going?

I commandeered about a third of the vegetable garden my husband had abandoned for health reasons. He had spent a good deal of effort amending the soil and removing rocks, so all I had to do was remove the weeds. You know, eight-foot-tall stoloniferous goldenrod and three-foot-tall deep-rooted dock. Once weeded, that would be a good place for sun-loving plants to grow while waiting for their new digs.

As I strolled around the house I realized there were areas where the riding lawn mower couldn’t go. Turning these areas into garden beds would be the least intrusive way of removing lawn. Happily, these areas were in shade.

One area was just an extension of the bed on the north side of the house. The other area surrounded our large propane tank and connected it to a little grove of trees I’ve dubbed the Bird Sanctuary.

I decided to record where I moved the plants in a small spiral notebook. Except sometimes I forgot to.

So What Actually Happened?

The ten-year-old chicken fence had developed several holes. The chickens, starved for greens and bugs after a snow-covered winter, happily left the confines of their yard to scratch in my garden beds. Any hope I had of keeping my daffodil varieties correctly identified was dashed. Not a great start to the Great Migration.

The first week of May

The first week of May, I took pictures of the Deck Alcove and Deck West so I would be able to locate the daffodils when their foliage had died and it was the best time to dig them. Sadly, I forgot I had taken those pictures when it came time to dig.

But it wouldn’t have helped too much because in the photos some daffodils had already bloomed, and some had yet to bloom. The best strategy would have been to dig and move them while they were blooming (it can be done, you just have to baby them a bit), but–the goldenrod and dock had to go first.

Yes, I was in the awkward position of needing to move plants to beds that weren’t yet ready for them. So I alternated between moving plants to already established beds–where I could find spots for them–and getting new beds ready.

I also started potting up plants to give away. As anyone who has transplanted a perennial has discovered, when you dig a plant up there is always more of it than you expected, so you keep a nice chunk of it for yourself and give some to your friends or donate the leftovers to a plant sale.

The first day of June

The first day of June, my son Arlan spent the day helping me. I gave him all the hard jobs that I had been dreading: digging up the monster hostas, the thorny moss rose, the woody-rooted peonies. Yes, you’re not supposed to dig peonies in the spring, but since I felt construction work was to commence any day now, I moved them while I had the chance.

We also started in on the goldenrod and dock. I’ve chronicled my previous encounters with both of those weeds, so I won’t go into the gory details here, except to say that the clay soil was at that perfect level of moisture where roots come out easily without much soil sticking to them. It was a godsend.

The New Shade Beds

Designing a new bed is one of the most creative aspects of gardening. Even though I felt under pressure, I enjoyed the process. I decided the North Bed Extension would be green and white.

I planted the Propane Bed primarily with foliage: golden, purple, and glaucous blue.

The Nursery Bed

As June went on I continued to remove goldenrod and dock from the Nursery Bed, and move plants there as space became available, following my triage rules since construction was to start any day now. Any day! Except it didn’t. One postponement led to another, and I was still planting into November.

Yes, dear reader, construction never started in 2022. It started this year, in April. So I dug, and relocated, a lot of plants. Pretty much everything I had even the slightest desire to save.

To get the job done, I neglected the rest of the garden. Scant pruning, no edging, and only the most egregious, bodacious, I-can’t-stand-it-any-longer weeds were pulled. I did water relocated plants during dry spells.

This Year

At the beginning of this year, the shrubs–which abutted the current deck and would be in the way of the expanded deck–had not yet been moved. They had been pruned back last year, and the Abelia monsanensis had even been root-pruned. My son Evan had dug holes for them in the Nursery Bed, but they never got moved that fall. Evan dug the imperiled shrubs and moved them just days before work was to start. They were still dormant when moved, and I’m happy to report they leafed out and bloomed normally.

Having trashed the rest of my garden last year in order to save the plants doomed to destruction, I thought this year would be exclusively devoted to bringing the rest of my garden back under the illusion of control. But, no.

Rescue Obsession

For as winter turned to spring, the plants that I had missed emerged, and I went on another round of plant rescue. Many were daffodils and other spring bulbs. After I dug and relocated (or gave away) all of those, there was a lull–which coincided with a dry spell. I edged a couple of beds since I didn’t want to plant anything in the dry soil and weeding was difficult.

Then more plants emerged. By now the new deck had been built but the lattice screening had not been installed. I had to hunch over as I dug a lot of Jacks-in-the-pulpit, some astilboides, catmint, shrub suckers, and other plants. And yes, I whacked my head a few times.

As long as there were garden-worthy plants growing under the deck, I felt compelled to dig them. Why? I don’t know. Finally the lattice was installed around the deck, putting an end to my digging. Or did it?

Shortly after the deck was sealed up, I learned the propane tank was to be upgraded to a larger one. You know, the propane tank I just created a shade bed around. That propane tank.

I’m currently in the midst of replanting that area, after potting up the plants surrounding the tank. I took a day off from that job to putter in the rest of the garden. No big projects, just little things that were bugging me. For once it felt like normal gardening instead of a rescue operation.

Last year I imagined that as plants came into bloom in the Nursery Bed, I would decide where their new home was and relocate them. Plants are coming into bloom, all right, but the new home isn’t ready. It isn’t even “built” yet. I hope by fall I will have places prepared for the shrubs, at least.

The adventure isn’t over yet, and I can see it’s going to go on for at least another year. What big projects have you tackled, and how long did they last?

Before

The Plan

After

The weather’s been crazy, to put it mildly. I know most of the country has endured similar: a thaw the week before Christmas, a sudden drop to unseasonably frigid temperatures, and (once everyone’s holiday plans were screwed up) a return to unseasonably warm temperatures.

I was thankful that we didn’t lose our snow cover during the first thaw, so that the plants did have some protection when the temperature dropped to -2°F at night. But with this second, post-Christmas thaw the snow is mostly gone. Monday it almost reached 50°F and it wasn’t raining, so I decided to walk around the garden and check on things.

Anguish: Exposed plant

Plants, especially those planted late in the fall, tend to heave out of the ground with alternating freezes and thaws. I thought I’d encourage any plants “bumping up” to bump back down again. But I never dreamed I’d see this:

“Do not expose roots to direct sun or drying wind; doing so can be fatal to the plants.” So says the planting guide that came with the terrestial orchid. You can be sure that I had followed planting instructions to the letter: buds 1/2 inch below the surface, an inch of mulch over that, roots spread horizontally in the top four inches of soil. What I didn’t do is cover the newly planted lady’s slipper with a foot-square board or piece of plastic, as was recommended. I did place a chicken wire cloche over the planting site to deter animal digging.

I don’t know if heavy rains washed the soil away or if some animal had gotten under the wire cage to make mischief. The site really didn’t look disturbed. I immediately got a small tub trug full of leaf mold, dumped it over the roots, and patted it down gently with my hands.

Then I replaced the wire cage.

It wasn’t until I started writing this post that I reread that bit about covering it with a piece of wood. I think I will hunt a scrap down before the thaw is over. The wood is supposed to keep the roots from getting too wet. On the other hand, the lady’s slipper should never dry out. And this hybrid is supposed to be one of the easy ones!

Why am I even trying? For one thing, I’ve seen Cypripedium acaule (one of the more difficult ones) growing nearby, less than half a mile away, just further down our road. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to think an easier lady’s slipper might thrive here. Also, I’m not getting any younger. I mean, if I wait “until I’m a better gardener” I might be dead first. You might say it’s been on my bucket list. Also, guess how you turn into a better gardener? By trying to grow plants you’ve never grown before.

But I have to say, I never expected to turn the corner and discover the most expensive plant I’ve ever planted in my life completely barerooted with no discernible cause.

Bliss: Weeding in January

Moving down the bed from the beleaguered lady’s slipper, I discovered patches of chickweed.

Chickweed (Stellaria media) easily germinates at temperatures between 53°F (12°C) and 68°F (20°C), but even manages at 36°F (2°C), and it survives 14°F (-10°C) just fine. Considering the insulating effect of snow and chickweed’s tolerance of low light, it’s perfectly capable of growing under the snow. I just couldn’t resist pulling it since I was right there and had an empty tub at hand.

The stems pulled easily but most of the roots got left behind. It’s possible they were still embedded in frozen soil at their very tips. I would have made a better job of it if I had gone back to the shed and gotten my gardening knife (aka hori-hori), but for Pete’s sake, this was supposed to be a quick walk around the garden and I had things to do indoors. (Rule number one: always take your hand pruners and your gardening knife before going anywhere in the garden. And your [phone] camera.)

Nevertheless, it wasn’t long before I filled my bucket. There’s a reason it’s called chickweed: chickens love it. At least, chickens on winter rations love it, and our chickens were very happy to have me dump my pickings over the fence into their yard.

Hope: Signs of Spring

It lifted my spirits to be weeding in January. It was dark; it was damp; it was delightful! It put me in such an optimistic frame of mind, I decided to look for signs of spring.

Vernal witch hazel (Hamamelis vernalis) blooms earlier than any of the hybrid spring-blooming witch hazels (Hamamelis x intermedia) I’ve planted. It’s native to the southern and central parts of North America, and considered hardy to USDA Zone 4. I’m going to try more cultivars of this shrub, because it’s wonderful to have something in bloom before the snowdrops.

I have several star magnolias (Magnolia stellata), all seedlings given to me by my next-door neighbor. At the time, I thought it was a native magnolia, and I planted all of them in woody edges abutting the lawn or fields. (It’s actually native to Japan.) The magnolia above was by far the biggest when I got it; the others are across the creek and struggling.

While the tree itself is hardy to USDA Zone 4, the buds can get blasted by a sudden cold spell. Last year it didn’t bloom at all and many other woody plants showed damage. When it does bloom, it’s in early May.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: plant your earliest blooming bulbs where the snow melts first. Most of my snowdrops have not emerged, but these, in the warmest microclimate, are raring to go. They had actually started to emerge in the first half of December before getting snowed under.

I see these ornamental kales from my front door. As long as the snow has melted, I get this blast of color. Fall mums have turned to mush, pansies may live but struggle to bloom, but the ornamental kale will continue to provide color well into winter. Eventually the onslaught of bitter cold, snow, and ice (especially) will cause them to brown and tatter, but in my cold climate they provide interest and pleasure far longer than any other traditional autumn outdoor plant.

Previous winter walk-abouts

Walking around the garden during a thaw: it’s a thing I’ve done many times before.

• A Winter Walk
• How to Create and Maintain Trails in Your Woods
• The January Thaw
• A Stroll Through Fickle February
• My First Day of Gardening–In February?
• Drowning in Snow
• Why You Need to Get Outside During the Next Thaw
• January Thaw Discoveries
• Winter Thaw Discoveries
• Plants Grow Under the Snow
• My First Glimpse of Snowdrops
• Gardening in February
• Wacky Winter Weeding

Pruning is the only gardening chore you can do in mud season, because your plants (and the weeds!) are still frozen in the ground. It’s a great excuse to get outside and do something–actual gardening! The weather is very unsettled during mud season, so it’s best to be strategic about what gets pruned when. Your design goals will also factor into prioritizing jobs.

For example, the very first pruning I did this mud season focused on spring flowering shrubs whose branches I wanted to bring inside: February daphne, forsythia, and flowering quince (Chaenomeles). This was easy to do on a mild day, even with a couple of inches of snow still on the ground.

When I’m cutting branches for forcing, I try to only cut crossing branches or ones that need to come out for other reasons, rather than hacking away indiscriminately. The daphne branches were perfect for this purpose–full of buds. The forsythia, blooming ten days later than the daphne, only had a few flower buds this year, and I’m still waiting for the quince to flower. Some years the buds don’t open all the way, but when they do, it looks like this (pictured below).

Of course, not every shrub needs pruning every year, especially if you did a good job matching the shrub’s mature height and width to the space available for it. But sometimes you want to prune a shrub because it looks better to you that way.

That’s why my next step was to shear my spireas into globes using hedge trimmers. The spireas are surrounded by perennials and bulbs, so I needed to do this job before the soil was the least bit defrosted.

In the past I’ve always preferred to let all of my shrubs retain their natural shape, but I’ve come to appreciate the contrast between clipped, geometrical shapes and organic forms in the garden. The spireas respond well to shearing, and since their new growth is the most intensely colored, they become a colorful counterweight to everything else going on in their respective beds.

After I sheared the boxwood, I read that Proven Winners advises to avoid pruning boxwood until after the new growth emerges. Oh, well. I don’t think the early shearing will hurt this boxwood. It was planted by the previous owners and I don’t think I’ve touched it in the ten years we’ve lived here. It was misshapen with branches sticking out every which way, some half dead. Maybe next year I’ll trim it after the new growth emerges.

As soon as the hellebore leaves were no longer frozen to the ground, I started cutting them back. I’ve learned through observation and note-taking that the hellebore’s fresh new leaves and flowers look a lot better without the blackened slime surrounding them. In many climates, the hellebore foliage remains evergreen and attractive, but not here.

I also trimmed back the few epimediums I have for the same reason I trim back the hellebores: the flowers emerge quite early and look so much better without last year’s foliage.

I’m currently cutting down the peony foliage that I should have cut down last October. My peonies get plagued with botrytis and it reduces infection to remove the foliage in a timely manner. This isn’t timely but better late than never.

For the first time ever I took apart my Felcos and thoroughly cleaned and lubricated them. This video by Laura LeBoutillier of Garden Answer gave me courage.

It helps to have a nice chunk of time set aside for this chore so you don’t feel rushed. Also, it will save a lot of aggravation if you find the right size tools to loosen the bolts before you start. In my household it’s not a given that the tools will be where they belong, and I have a different model pruner than Laura does so I needed a different size wrench, which I found by trial and error. But if you get everything you need together before you start, it’s doable.

Once my pruners were sharpened I trimmed my spring-blooming witch hazels back to the first bloom on each branch, while they were still blooming and I could see exactly where that spot was. I’ve been told this will encourage them to be more floriferous. We shall see.

Pruning: What comes next?

So far all the pruning I’ve done was made easier by frozen or just-barely-thawed ground. I wanted the shrubs or plants to be dormant (or just waking up) when they were pruned. It needs to be a little warmer for the remaining pruning I want to do. That’s because I need the shrubs to show me where I need to cut.

I wait until I see swelling leaf buds before I prune Hydrangea paniculata (PeeGee types) and H. arborescens (Annabelle types) cultivars. But come to think of it, I really don’t have to wait, because you can prune them in spring or fall. I’ve never considered pruning them in autumn, because I like seeing snow on the dried flowers. But who am I kidding? If I never have time to get the peonies cut down before snow flies (and I really should do this job to prevent disease), I’m not going to have time to prune the hydrangeas.

Proven Winners advises pruning no more than 30% off either of these types. “For example, if your hydrangea is six feet tall, it is safe to prune as much as two feet off the top and sides.” Lee Reich, writing in The Pruning Book (aff link), says to cut them back to ground level, or a to permanent framework.

My friend Lee Ginenethal, mentioned below, has this method for pruning his H. paniculata ‘Limelight’: “First step- eliminate any branch that is not substantially thicker than a pencil. Shorten all new growth to the first or second set of buds. Final step- open the structure and shape for a rounded crown.” I think I will try Lee’s method this year. Berry White, Vanilla Strawberry, Limelight Prime, Bobo, Little Hottie, Little Quick Fire, Quick Fire Fab, Zinfin Doll, Quick Fire, Fire Light, and Fire Light Tidbit are the panicle hydrangeas in my garden.

Fun fact: Only H. paniculata can be trained into a tree form, which always confused me, because “arborescens” sounds more like it could be a tree, going by the botanical name. H. arborescens is the kind that suckers, which means it will gradually expand its territory. In my garden, this applies to the Incrediballs and the Invincibelles. (All my hydrangeas were sent to me to trial.)

Sounds like I should get cracking on pruning those hydrangeas! Why prune them at all? To keep them from becoming a complete thicket, full of congested branches that aren’t getting enough light. Once both species are well-established, they will grow to the height their genetics have determined. You can’t keep them shorter by pruning, so look at the tag before you buy and don’t grow one that’s the wrong mature size for the spot you have in mind.

Rose pruning

Roses–even hardy roses–often have dieback in my garden. I wait for the leaf buds on the roses to swell, so I can see exactly how much dead wood needs to be removed.

Lee Ginenthal of Der Rosenmeister Nursery has some videos on rose pruning if you want to dive deeper. These are all on Facebook. I’m not sure if you can see them if you don’t have an account.

• Pruning roses
• Pruning a climber
• How to prune and train a climber
• Pruning a rambling rose, Part 1
• Part 2 on pruning a rambler
• Part 3, pruning ramblers
• Part 4, pruning ramblers
• Part 5, last part on pruning ramblers

Whack jobs

This is the easiest kind of pruning: you just whack the whole thing to the ground. Last year I started doing this to the purple-leaved smokebush that was here when we moved in. I don’t know what variety it is, but it never makes “smoke”–the wispy-misty panicles of insignificant flowers that give smokebush its name. Some people don’t like the smoke, and they cut the shrub down every year because this causes the shrub to make bigger leaves.

Well, I like the smoke, but it’s clearly not showing up, probably because the flowers are killed by the cold. I started cutting it back to the ground last year. It made me nervous to take such drastic action, but it did eventually resprout, and the reddish purple leaves were bigger.

It can be cut back anytime before it leafs out, and since it leafs out on the late side, I tend to save it for later.

I usually only cut back the oldest branches of my redtwig dogwood, but this year I think I’m going to cut it all down to the ground to see what kind of difference it makes. The youngest branches are supposed to be the brightest red, and I can see that the oldest branches look more yellow at the base.

I’m also going to dig out those satellite shrubs and give them a new home. The vivid branches are one of the main features of this shrub, so I don’t want to cut it down until I have to–which is when I see buds starting to swell. I want to prune it before it expends any energy making leaves, because it won’t be keeping those leaves.

You’re supposed to prune crossing branches whenever you find them, but I’m going to wait until after this rhododendron blooms before I do that. Why? I’m going to have to cut a major branch, and I don’t want to lose all those potential flowers. It really won’t be mud season anymore by then!

As you can see, the reason you prune can make a difference for when you prune. I could prune those hydrangeas in autumn, but I like seeing snow on the dried flowers. The “right” time to prune spring-flowering shrubs is two weeks after they bloom–but I want to force the branches indoors, so I prune earlier. Instead of shearing the spireas into globe shapes, I could let them keep their natural form and just remove the oldest branches. And I could prune dead wood from the rose bushes in the middle of summer if I had to–but it’s a heck of a lot easier to do it before the shrub is leafed out. Some pruning decisions are made for aesthetics, and some are made for logistics. And I (or you) get to decide.

My son has a drone camera and captured these images of our home and landscape in January. It’s always nice to get a different view of the garden. I’ve numbered various features of note and linked to blog posts where I discuss them in more detail. Sometimes the entire post is about that feature, and sometimes you have to read through the post to find where I discuss it. If, like me, you are waiting for the snow to melt, here’s a way to pass some time. Hope you enjoy it! Note: click on the image to get a larger image.

If you don’t want to click on all those links, there’s a tour of the gardens post here that covers most of the areas.

1. House
2. Carriage barn
3. Garden shed
4. Chicken coop
5. Bird Sanctuary
6. Ash tree
7. Vegetable garden
8. Potager/Cutting Garden
9. Slope Garden
10. Damp Meadow
11. Sundial
12. Back creek
13. Glen Brook (aka the side creek)
14. Waterfall
15. Roadside beds Daffodils 1, Daffodils 2, Daffodils 3, Sundrops
16. Secret Garden
17. Wild Apple Woods
18. Cabin Fever Bed Cabin Fever Bed 2, Blooms
19. Front Walk
20. Wellhead Bed
21. Front Garden Amending Beds, Heirloom Iris, Garden Tour
22. Parking Pad/Fern Alley
23. Herb Garden
24. West Deck
25. Deck Alcove
26. North Deck
27. Rose Purgatory

I first saw these architectural birdhouses several years ago, in the grocery store, of all places. I resisted them until they went on sale, and then I couldn’t resist at all.

Since I’m not usually a collector, it surprised me how many of these birdhouses came home with me. While I found most of them at the grocery store, I also found them in the home decor section of a few other stores. I have seen them sold online for much more than I paid. I suspect the ones I have are seconds, but they looked fine to me when I purchased them.

The tag that comes with each one emphasizes that they were designed with birds in mind:

I really wanted them to be displayed outside, and I really wanted them to stay looking nice. I did not want them to weather. So I bought a gallon of spar urethane. It promised “exceptional protection from sunlight, rain and moisture, temperature.” Sounds perfect.

I painted on a coat, let it dry, sanded lightly, and applied a second coat. It was tedious work, not my cup of tea. But hey, it was winter, and I was looking forward to displaying them outside.

The results were very disappointing.

This is what I thought would happen if I didn’t apply the spar urethane. They were only outside for the growing season. They did not have to endure the rigors of an upstate NY winter. Looking at this makes me want to cry.

I’m not a crafty or DIY person. I see these results and wonder, what did I do wrong? Did I miss painting the edges where the delamination occurred? What exactly does sand lightly mean? Did I not sand enough? Did I use the wrong grit? Should I have applied a third coat?

What should I do now?

I only varnished and put out about a third of my birdhouses. The rest have been inside, waiting for me to make time to work on them. But clearly I can’t do what I did before.

Readers, I need your help. If you have more experience with these types of things, please give me your advice in the comments.

Should I try the spar urethane again, except pay more attention to the edges, do more sanding, and give everything three coats?

Should I try something different, like automotive clear coat (affiliate link)?

Or do you know of something that works better?

That takes care of the unspoiled birdhouses. I’m still trying to decide if it’s worth my time to repair and repaint the ones that got damaged. What do you think?

The holidays are over. Seeds have been ordered (or not–I decided to take a break from seed sowing). The temperature is dropping (-5°F tonight) and the wind is blowing (wind chill advisory in effect). Time to binge-watch some gardening shows. I’ve been watching BBC 2’s Gardeners’ World for several years now, and I’ve got some tips for you to get the most out of it.

Gardeners’ World is an hour-long British gardening television show, currently moderated by Monty Don but also featuring other presenters. It usually opens with the camera approaching Monty Don as he’s working on a gardening task. He looks up and says, “Hello, welcome to Gardeners’ World.” It feels like he is welcoming you to his personal garden (which it is) and talking to you as a fellow gardener.

Each episode of Gardeners’ World has several segments, some of which take place in Monty’s garden, Longmeadow. These are usually demonstrations of a gardening technique. I learn just by watching him work in his garden. Just to see him dig with a shovel or prune a shrub helps me understand how to work more efficiently in my own garden. I also learn more about plants, even though I have to run it through the gardening-in-my-climate filter (see below). We also see garden techniques demonstrated by other presenters, in their own gardens or in other locations.

The visits to other locations–grand estates and more modest gardens as well–sometimes provide seasonal inspiration and sometimes focus on a particular topic. I especially love it when they feature the holders of National Collections (eg the National Collection of  Irises bred by Sir Cedric Morris). The people who are so focused on one species are a little bit wacky and a lot nerdy–and I kind of identify with that. I mean, I have over 50 different kinds of colchicums, and could easily tell you more than you wanted to know about them.

Since the pandemic started, they have also featured garden videos sent in from viewers, predominantly from Britain but also other countries, including the U.S. But before you start bingeing, there’s a few things you should know.

The British Climate

There is no place in Great Britain colder than our USDA hardiness zone 8. (I consider USDA hardiness zones 5 and lower to be cold climates.) If you don’t believe me, take a look at this map. The RHS’ coldest hardiness rating is H7–plants that tolerate -20°C (-4°F). Any plant rated H7 is considered “very hardy.” I’m not sure they can even fathom temperatures any colder. There are some places in Britain where they rarely even have frost—ever—and can leave tender plants in the ground. Also, their growing season is much longer than ours in terms of number of frost-free days, due to prevailing winds that bring the warmth stored in the Atlantic Ocean. They also have much longer daylight in summer because they are so much further north. (Of course, their nights in winter are even longer than ours.) So be skeptical when you hear a plant described as hardy. It may be hardy for us, but you’ll need to do further research to be certain.

Their conception of hot weather is also skewed. For example, one year the presenters kept complaining about how hot it was at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show. I looked it up, and it got up to 24°C—which is about 75°F. Not exactly too hot, if you ask me! (One perk of watching a pre-recorded show is you can pause it and convert C to F using Google or the calculator built into Windows 10.) And if they want to grow decent tomatoes, they grow them in a greenhouse, because they need the extra heat to ripen them.

Because our summers are also cool, there’s enough overlap in featured plants to be familiar, yet enough differences to keep it interesting. Pruning is the one area where I’m not sure their conditions apply, specifically when to prune. For example, Monty prunes his roses in January, but I wait until they start to leaf out, because I know there will be dieback and I wait to see exactly how far down it goes.

Differences in gardenspeak

Most of the time, when the British pronounce words differently, they mean the same thing. For example, the first syllable of privacy is not a long i, but rhymes with give. Evolution begins with a long e sound. And saint, as in St. Mark’s Square, is pronounced sin–barely pronouncing the vowel at all. If you’re like me, you’ll suddenly recognize a word you had heard many times whose pronunciation had concealed it from you.

But there are some words which have a different meaning. British gardeners mean something different by the word “compost” than we do. To them, compost (pronounced cumpust) is any kind or type of potting mix. “Garden compost” is what we would just call compost. And when they say “chalk” they are referring to a free-draining alkaline soil derived from limestone. If they say it grows well on chalk, it probably won’t like my acid clay.

Also, they like to use grit a lot. I don’t find horticultural grit in big box stores or independent garden centers, but I can usually find chicken grit in feed stores. You can also use turface or vermiculite instead.

How do they create Gardeners’ World?

Listen to this podcast where Monty explains the whole process. The actual podcast starts around 23:30 where Monty talks about the weather they’ve been having. When he says it got down to 15 degrees, he means Celsius and that would be 5F. He said it had gotten to 41C in the summer and that’s 106F–which I would say is pretty hot for England. The part about filming Gardeners’ World starts at 19:14 if you’re too impatient to hear about Brits whining about their version of cold weather.

Where to find past episodes

The BBC closely guards their Gardeners’ World episodes. And why not? That’s how they make their money. (They do offer some sample clips on their website.) Gardeners’ World episodes on Youtube are quickly taken down. But there are a few legitimate places to find and watch them. If you are already subscribed to Britbox, you will find them on there. But if, like me, you find the subscription fee a little steep, there is another source: HDClump. I’m not exactly sure why they have permission to archive these, but apparently they do. All the episodes from 2021 are in this folder. They are arranged in reverse chronological order so the first episode of 2021 is here. There were 30 regular season episodes and then three Winter Specials 2021/22. (The Winter Specials 2021 are actually recaps of the 2020 season, which due to COVID restrictions, was not up to the usual standards.) Update: the 2022 episodes are in this folder and you’ll find 2023’s episodes here.

But wait–there’s more!

That will get you started. But HDClump has a lot more. At the top of their home page they have a “Gardening” menu item. Hover your cursor over that and a drop-down menu appears. This will keep your busy for a lo-o-o-ng time. I especially recommend to you Monty Don’s armchair garden travel specials. The first of these was Around the World in 80 Gardens, released in 2008. This was followed in later years by Italian Gardens, French Gardens, Paradise Gardens, Japanese Gardens, and, in 2020, American Gardens. It was fun to watch Monty explore the United States gardening culture, but also frustrating, because there was so much more he could have seen (How could he skip [insert your favorite garden here]?) and so much that was painted with too broad a brush. (We’re not all slaves to our lawns.) He’s currently touring the Adriatic; the second episode goes live tonight.

There’s a lot in the Monty Don menu list that I have yet to see myself. And I still need to explore most of the non-Monty garden shows, though I have watched Carol Klein’s Life in a Cottage Garden series and enjoyed it very much.

And if you haven’t gotten enough of Monty, you can follow him on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and his own website. (BBC Gardeners’ World also has a Facebook account.) And he’s written many books. He’s also been written up in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the New Yorker, among many others.

So there you are, my winter-weary, cabin-fever-crazed fellow gardeners: a way to enjoy gardening from the comfort of your own couch, feasting your eyes on green and growing plants, and perhaps picking up a tip or technique or two that you can use when our long winter is over. By then, the next season of Gardeners’ World should be airing. (I kid you not: it begins in March, when we are still dealing with mud season.)

What about American gardening shows?

Our family is unusual in that we don’t own a television set and don’t subscribe to cable or any streaming services. Until I was introduced to Gardeners’ World, I rarely watched any videos at all. So I don’t know much about American gardening shows. I do know that for years, U.S. gardeners have been complaining that there’s not much G in HGTV.

HGTV used to have a show called Gardening by the Yard, featuring Paul James, but that was canceled years ago, and I could only find a few episodes. Let’s face it, as Monty says, “In Britain, if you go to a dinner party, you wouldn’t consider it odd or unusual to meet a gardener. In America, the chances of finding someone who actively gardens is far more remote: it’s not part of the zeitgeist, and it’s seen as eccentric.” Growing a Greener World is the closest thing we have to Gardeners’ World, and it produces 11 half-hour segments a year, contrasted with Gardeners’ World’s 30 one-hour episodes–not counting the specials.

Of course, there are many “plantfluencers” on various social media platforms with large followings. If you have a favorite you follow, or know of another American gardening show, please let us all know about it in the comments.

I decided on a broadfork in a roundabout way. I was rooting pink pussy willow cuttings and wanted to give them a cushy home for a few years before planting them in their wilder, permantent location. I had surplus colchicum corms that I knew I could find a good home for–but maybe not right away.

What I needed was a nursery bed.

What I had was an overgrown section of an abandoned vegetable garden. Oh, those weeds! Goldenrod and dock, some taller than me! Weeds so intimidating I put off clearing a space for my baby pussy willows. There were plenty of other items on my gardening to-do list so it was easy to save it for later.

How am I going to clear this bed?

In the bad old days the solution would have been to rent a rototiller and chop up the weeds and rake them out. That didn’t appeal to me for several reasons. First of all, that kind of machinery is too powerful for me to handle. I’d have to get someone else to haul the tiller from the rental place and do the work for me.

Also, experts have been telling us for quite a while–and gardeners are finally starting to listen–that the soil is alive with microscopic creatures and mycorhizzae, and the less we disturb that environment, the better it is for the plants we want to grow. Whole books have been written on the subject.

Furthermore, because of the nature of the weeds growing there, rototilling would only be a temporary solution. The goldenrod sends out rhizomes in all directions, which can resprout from pieces left in the ground (pictures here). And dock sends roots down to China–well, further down than a rototiller’s tines reach, anyway– and, again, it can resprout if a decent-sized chunk of root is left (pictures here). Well, who am I kidding? No matter what method of removal, pieces of root will be left behind, but I think a rototiller would leave a lot more behind.

Can a broadfork do the job?

I’m not sure what made me think of using a broadfork to tackle this job. My usual way to remove goldenrod and dock is to wait until the soil is thoroughly moist from a recent rain, and then loosen the offending plants with a garden fork and pull them out by hand. But this was such a big area; I’d need a really big fork . . . oh! That’s what a broadfork is!

I was only vaguely familiar with broadforks. I thought they were mostly for fluffing up a well-tended raised bed without disturbing soil organisms at the beginning of the food growing season. Could they handle entrenched weeds? I asked two experts, Noel Valdez of Cobrahead and Greg Baka of Easy Digging Tools. Noel assured me, “The tool works well in both recently gardened areas and in areas where weeds or grass have been dominant for long periods.” Greg concurred: “For uprooting the dock and goldenrod, a broadfork would indeed be faster and easier on your back than a conventional garden fork.”

Alrighty, then! I wound up purchasing my broadfork from Easy Digging Tools. They sell an all-metal broadfork made by Meadow Creature, which is heavier than the one Cobrahead sells but I suspected would be more durable. I live with several family members who are much stronger than me and not averse to using brute force if the situation seems to call for it, and I had to assume that at some point they would be using the tool for their own projects.

I finally went after those weeds

Unfortunately I did not get my project started as soon as I would have liked. It was mid-November–too close to winter for comfort. In fact, we had snow accumulation (which melted) between when I started and when I finished. My grand plans to clear the entire raised bed turned into “clear enough ground to get the pussy willows planted and call it good.”

The soil was nice and moist and I had no trouble inserting the broadfork the full length of its tines. I made two passes over the area. The second pass was at right angles to the first. Then I got down on my knees and scooped up most of the weeds with my (gloved) hands. The dock and goldenrod did need a little more attention. I followed the goldenrod rhizomes back to the mother plant and uprooted the whole mess there.

For the largest dock weeds, I placed a board on the newly loosened soil so that my weight was distributed and then pulled them up by hand. There was one that didn’t come up and I probably could have spent more time loosening it with the broadfork, but I got impatient and resorted to my Root Slayer shovel. That thing has a longer blade than the broadfork tines, but I still didn’t get the whole root!

That stone you see at the bottom of the photo above was one I unearthed while planting the willows. The broadfork kept hitting it but couldn’t bring it up because the rock was vertical in the soil and kept slipping through the broadfork tines. But I consider that an exception–it brought up plenty of other rocks.

Other uses for a broadfork

The flyer that came with my Meadow Creature broadfork suggested several other uses for it. It makes harvesting root crops much easier, for one thing. They also suggested using it for lifting plants for division or transplanting. I have a humongous hellebore that I tried to split this spring, and couldn’t get the spade to go through it. Next year I think I’ll use the broadfork to lift the whole thing and cut it with my root knife. Of course it could also be used to remove plants that you have no intention of replanting, like invasive plants or smallish dead shrubs.

On the EasyDigging.com website they say that only the Meadow Creature broadfork is sturdy enough to remove sod. We have used a mattock to do that in the past. “We” meaning the strong members of the family. I think I would have more luck with the broadfork. Previously I’ve done small areas with a garden fork.

Is it for you?

I think it’s pretty clear by its size that a broadfork is more suitable for larger properties. But it’s not a single-purpose tool, so if you have a larger property, especially if you grow vegetables in raised beds, it’s a tool worth considering, especially now as the gift-giving season rolls around. I know I have big plans for mine.

Further reading

• Why do soil aeration with a broadfork?
• How to improve clay soil with a broadfork
• Are Wood, Fiberglass, or Steel Broadfork Handles Better?
• Broadfork Roundup
• Digging Potatoes with a Broadfork
• Prepping Open Raised Beds for Winter
• Weeding with a Broadfork

Forcing branches of flowering shrubs and trees is a skill I try to get better at every year–it’s another way to hurry spring up. Compared to last year, this winter has been more consistently snowy and cold. It hasn’t been severely cold, but we haven’t had the intermittent thaws that we had last year.

But for the last week, the temperatures have moderated. Almost every day has managed to get above freezing, which makes me think it’s time to start forcing branches.

How do you force branches?

The basic concept is simple: cut branches of flowering shrubs and trees, bring them into the house, and let the warmer indoor temperatures coax the branches into early bloom. But the devil is in the details!

When do you cut the branches?

Most articles about this topic say as long as you’ve had at least 8 weeks of temperatures under 40°F (4.4°C), you can cut branches anytime. Most articles also say wait for a day when the temperature is above freezing. In my cold climate, I prefer to wait until we’ve had a week of temperatures above freezing–ideally 40°F or above. That’s because those flower buds have been chilled for months (not weeks) and I like them to get a hint of spring in their system before I bring them indoors.

Other people say if you soak the entire length of the branches in water for 24 hours, it will overcome the effects of a prolonged cold season. The only place suggested for this soaking is a bathtub. Maybe you have a bathtub to spare, but I don’t want to risk finding out what happens if I put a “bunch of sticks” in the tub where family members get ready to go to work. So, I wait until we’ve had a thaw before going out to cut.

Most articles on this topic that I’ve read assume a shorter winter than what I have. This schedule from the Vermont Cooperative Extension is more realistic for cold climates, but even they suggest to start cutting earlier than I do. Experiment to see what works best for you.

What kind of branches do you cut?

Any early-blooming or -budding woody plant is fair game. It depends on what is growing in your garden. It helps if it needs pruning anyway.

Forsythia is my first choice. It blooms readily indoors; it usually needs thinning; and I love that sunshine yellow. Since it blooms so early outdoors it’s not that far from blooming when you bring it indoors. The trick is to make sure you are trying to force branches that have flower buds on them.

In my experience, the newest growth only has leaves. You want branches that are at least two years old. If you look closely at a branch, you will see two different kinds of buds. The plumper ones are the flower buds. In the photo above, you can see they are already starting to open. The leaf buds are narrower and have scales.

Of course you want to cut branches that have lots of flower buds, but also need to come out for aesthetic reasons. But the old branches that need to be pruned out are typically not the ones with lots of flowers, so choices must be made.

I’ve also forced flowering quince. The first year I tried, the branches never bloomed. The buds swelled, but never got any further than that. Eventually they started to brown and drop off, and the branches started to leaf out.

I decided I had cut them too soon, so last year I waited longer before I cut them. As with the forsythia, I cut branches that needed to be pruned anyway. In this case, the branches were hanging over a parking area, so they were not the oldest branches and had lots of flower buds. I was surprised to see the flower color was much paler than usual, and I actually liked it better.

My February daphne (Daphne mezereum) has not really grown big yet, and normally I wouldn’t consider cutting branches. But I wanted to limb it up so I could plant primroses and bulbocodiums at its base. Of course I forced the branches.

Other plants (which I haven’t tried myself) include Cornelian cherry, witch hazel (spring blooming types), poplar, willow, red maple, alder, Juneberry, apple and crabapple, birch, and cherry. Again, start with what you have, or what a neighbor gives you permission to cut.

If you followed good pruning practices, you will probably have cut larger branches with many side branches. Before going back inside, look everything over to see if you can make further cuts so you are bringing smaller branches with the most flower buds into the house.

What do you do after you cut them?

You treat them like any other cut flower, but you have to wait longer for the pay off.

• Use clean water and a clean vase. Choose a vase that is large enough to hold the branches and won’t tip over.
• Cut the ends of the branches under water, making two cuts perpendicular to each other (like a cross) so that you increase the surface area available for water uptake.
• Place in a cool room away from direct sun. And wait. It typically takes a couple of weeks, but could take longer if the buds aren’t very advanced.
• Replace the water every couple of days or whenever you see it get cloudy.
• When the buds start to open, pat yourself on the back! You can bring the arrangement into a warmer room (so you can see them as you go about your daily tasks) but they will deteriorate more quickly if you do.

A few last words . . .

The best way to get started is to stick whatever you’ve just pruned into a bucket or vase of water and see what happens. As you can see from the list above, even trees that you might not think of as “flowering” can provide some interest. The worst that can happen is . . . nothing. A bunch of sticks in water remains nothing more than a bunch of sticks in water.

But even if they don’t flower, your prunings may leaf out, weeks before they would do so outside. It’s a little bit of spring indoors and it can be addicting. Before you know it, you’ll be eyeing your garden for what else you can cut, and choosing new woodies for your garden based on how easily they can be forced. I planted a variety of willows known for attractive catkins last year for just this reason.

Want to learn more?

These websites inspired and encouraged me.

From Dormant to Delightful

Forcing Flowering Branches for Winter Blooms

Forcing Flowering Branches