For most of my gardening history here, I've been practicing "guerilla gardening", expanding my garden areas by dashing in, planting something tough (daylilies, lambs ears, peonies, daffodils, etc.), then moving on. I may not revisit that area to garden it for a couple of years, but these tough plants usually take hold and make a first outpost for a new garden. It's worked very well.
But this spring I want to concentrate my efforts a bit. Sort of fine-tune and embellish some of the more established areas that are still "new" but aren't weedy or rough any longer. I really like the look of an early spring bulb display, lots of different little flowers all coming up and blooming around the same time, en masse. This is going to be the project for the next couple of weeks. I've already planted a big area of winter aconites in the Glade. A few years ago, I put in a number of species crocus bulbs there, so already there will be the bright yellow of the aconites and the purples, creams, and whites of the crocus. Today, I put in about 20 small clumps of miniature daffodils in the Glade. These all came from overgrown and "blind" clumps in various other parts of the garden. Next, I think I'll divide a big clump of snowdrops in the Apple Tree garden and spread those throughout the Glade. (Already lifted and divided two snowdrop clumps and from 2, I got 12 new clumps!) I've also got a huge spread of bright blue scilla, which are blooming right now, that I want to sprinkle thru that same area. In the fall, despite being the cheapskate that I am, I may even buy a bag of chinodoxa and put those in there. In an ideal world, I'd also add species tulips, but we have a lot of squirrels moving into the area and I don't think tulips would stand a chance. I suppose if I were truly devoted I could fashion little underground bulb cages to deter the nibblers, but seriously.... Me? Here? This sounds too much like the sort of "activity" they'll prescribe for me when I finally end up in the padded cell ward. Diagnosis: Paranoid Gardeneritis. ("she seems to believe that squirrels are plotting against her...")
I think I'd also like to make a smaller concentrated area of the same sorts of things up in the Rock Garden. I've already got aconites and crocus in there, so moving some mini daffs in will be next. (I actually wanted to do this years ago in that spot but the small bulbs I planted one year were almost completely scratched out and eaten by my hens. If I do this again, I'll put down netting over the planted areas.)
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I'm slowly re-doing the raised bed edges in the berry patch, switching from boards to concrete blocks. I had everything very neat and tidy last year and then I scored a big 10X10 chain link dog kennel and decided to use it as a berry cage. I set it up and I think it will work fine (minus the chain link, which will be replaced with fine mesh), but now the raised beds and paths are all wonky in relation to the cage structure. The plan for now is to simply get it to work as-is and if it is too difficult to maneuver around, then I guess in the fall I'll have to rip everything out and replant/reconfigure paths. I just don't want to lift and move those berry plants AGAIN after having done so just the other year.
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First signs of carrot germination in the veg! Very sparse, so I don't know if this is going to work this year as well as it did last. I think I'll put in a second sowing of carrots this week and see how that goes.
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By some marvel of climate change, my garden is synced up with Monty Don's garden on BBC Gardeners World. He advises pruning red twigged dogwood this week and by gum I'm going to do it! It's kind of nice to see that his gardens are at about the same early stage as my own, maybe a bit ahead because I'll bet he hasn't been seeing 22F overnight temps! Lucky sod.
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And finally, I think we can all relate to this.
https://youtube.com/shorts/fcn...
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