December 15, 2023
A spring bouquet of daffodils. Can you picture it? A glass vase filled with a lovely yellow bunch of daffodils paired with sprigs of golden forsythia is surely one of the first great spring pleasures. Those early days of April are brimming with the promise of good things to come. Soon, the tulips, iris, and peonies will each have their day or week in the sun. They all pass much too quickly, but we know we can rely on the arrival of the summer heat lovers. The coneflowers, foxgloves, bee balm and so many other wonders are the staples of the flower arrangements that adorn our lives over the summer months. September brings on the dahlias in their most perfect and colorful glory. Then, as the frosty days of late October set in, we reluctantly put the garden to bed and plan for the next growing season.
But, what if the fall season brought in a whole new crop of plants for our enjoyment? What if we could extend those arrangements over the course of the whole year? That is what I have been thinking about as I glean the yard for ingredients for a winter arrangement. Hollies seem to thrive in the understory of the great Freetown pines providing a green backdrop to the landscape, but I wish I had planted more shrubs for winter enjoyment. I do wonder at this, but I am happy for the few that I have. I didn’t realize when I planted the blue spruces some years ago, I would be trimming them for greenery. So too with the Azalea, Japonica, Leucothoe, and Japanese Yew. I always wait till the first week in December to do the trimming as their cuttings make great additions to Christmas arrangements.
The shovels and garden tools have been put away as the ground is too frosty for digging, but these dark days of autumn’s end is the perfect time to plan the garden. As I walk the landscape, I make a mental note about what I can plant to add more color next year. I am thankful for the little foresight that I did have in planting some Winterberry bushes. The problem is that they are very slow growing so I would not recommend planting them from twigs as I did a few years ago. As I grow older, the seasons seem to come and go so much more quickly than they once did. There is an old saying that the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, and the second-best time is today. If we cannot dig, we can at least plan the gardens of our imagination.
