MÉLANIe'S GARDENS

When we tend to our gardens, we make decisions based on a kind of assumed permanence. We plan and plant as if the systems we see will remain. Gardens change through the seasons, but in the long term, we often treat them as stable.

Each spring, the thaw forms a seasonal creek that runs from the Niagara Escarpment towards Lake Ontario. It passes through the back of a Grimsby garden and floods the area.

Many years ago, the garden owner decided to shape this creek and turn it from a vague flood zone into an actual small trenched riverbed. The riverbed twisted and turned, and ornamental boulders were placed along its curves to shape and alter its path. This allowed the water to linger and to sink deeper into the soil, following the meandering path.

Trees were planted along its banks so they could enjoy the additional water in springtime. As they matured, they grew thicker than neighboring trees.

Kids played in this garden, and as the trees grew, they played along the riverbanks, sending little made-up boats down the water.

Recently, on nearby land, construction was done that diverted this seasonal creek. It was dug in under a berm to limit and control its flow. Even on a wet spring like this year’s, it no longer visits the garden where it used to flow.

The trees are mature now, but the summers are hot, and the lack of seasonal water may become felt over time. Trees speak in years.

In Grimsby, the Niagara Escarpment to the south and Lake Ontario to the north create a large geographical frame that deeply affects the ecology of the region.

In the spring, Lake Ontario remains cold for a long time, which cools the surrounding area. Between the lake and the escarpment, cool air pools, mitigating early seasonal temperature swings. This protects early crops from blooming too early, easing vulnerability to later frosts.

In the fall, the reverse happens: the lake retains warmth, which pools up to the Niagara Escarpment and protects crops from an early frost.

This is ideal for fruit trees such as cherries and peaches, and is one of the reasons why the Niagara region is known for those crops.

These patterns are dependent on the framing geography of the area. If that geography were to be changed, it would alter the movement of air temperature.

For example, if airflow were interrupted by a tall wall on the lakeside, it would shelter the inland portion from the cooling effects of the lake in the spring and the warming effects of the lake in the fall. Sensitive crops such as cherries would be more susceptible to damage, and crops could fail more often. The delicate balance that allows orchards to thrive would be disrupted.

This could be the case with lakeside construction, which would affect inland farmland and expose tender fruit trees to earlier frost and greater temperature swings in the spring. Farming, a practice already made difficult by many factors, may cease to be sustainable altogether. For a region that has cherries, peaches and other tender fruit at the core of its identity, this change would be substantial.

Our gardens may seem small and self-encompassed. It can be difficult to see how actions outside of their boundaries may affect them.

But understanding their place in the larger ecosystem, and the changes happening in the greater geography, can bring our attention to the flow changes affecting the plantings inside our gardens.

However large these neighbouring changes may appear to us once we see their effect on our plantings, these changes are also happening within a much greater context.

The Niagara region, and the Niagara Escarpment itself, has been shaped over hundreds of millions of years. This is why we can find fossils in the escarpment: remnants of a prehistoric sea that once thrived in this area. Cherries would not be possible in the Niagara if sediments had not settled into the Escarpment, seas retreated, ice thawed and Lake Ontario formed.

Change on a large scale can be very slow, but it is inevitable.

Ultimately, our gardens are impermanent.
Whether we acknowledge that change or not, it will happen. Sometimes, it is too slow for human lifespans to see, sometimes it happens abruptly and we see its effects in years, or even months. But an awareness that change may come from beyond what we can predict can inform more resilient plant choices, or a wider palette that allows our gardens to reset and rebound as conditions shift.

It’s that time of year again. Birds start chirping, the sun feels brighter, and bulbs begin to poke through the leafy layer left by fall.

This is about timing.

Every spring, this presents a dilemma. When bulbs emerge through the leaf layer, I know that if I wait too long, they will grow through the foliage. At that point, removing the leaves becomes much more difficult. I can no longer use a rake and instead have to carefully untangle them by hand. My first instinct is to clear the leaves early.

However, it is still early in the season. Temperatures hover around zero. While the bulbs are beginning to wake, many insects remain dormant under that same leaf layer. The leaves act as an insulator, keeping the ground at a more stable temperature. Removing them too soon can expose overwintering insects to cold, or remove them entirely.

So the decision becomes case-specific. In areas where bulbs are dense, or where a heavy layer of leaves is preventing emergence, I remove the foliage. This is often visible: bulbs appear pale, yellow, compressed. They cannot emerge without help. In other areas, I leave the leaves in place, or move them aside but keep them on the property. The work becomes sectional, not uniform.

There is also a design implication here. By placing bulbs in certain areas, you are determining when and how easily those areas can be cleaned in spring. Design is not separate from maintenance. It sets the timing of future work.

Sometimes, during spring cleanup, you come across things that have eluded you.

This week, I found an established chokecherry shrub with numerous black, tar-like growths along its branches. There were many, far more than I had ever noticed before. In summer and fall, the foliage obscures the structure of the plant, so it may have been present without being visible.

I confirmed it was black knot, a fungal disease affecting Prunus species.

At this time of year, with temperatures rising and moisture present, the fungus begins to spread. Rain was coming. That made the timing clear.

I pruned immediately. I removed the affected branches well below each infection point, working carefully to avoid unnecessary disturbance. I kept the material contained and avoided contaminating tools or surfaces. Afterwards, I disinfected both loppers and hand pruners.

Other tasks were delayed. This one could not wait.

Spring is also the time when initial pruning begins on shrubs.

There are broadly two types: those that bloom on old wood, and those that bloom on new growth. Knowing which is which matters. Pruning a shrub that blooms on old wood in spring may not harm the plant, but it can remove that season’s flowers.
This week, I was tidying bigleaf hydrangeas, Hydrangea macrophylla, which bloom on old wood.

I pruned the dead blooms, then looked closely at the stems. Where there were active leaf buds forming, I left them. Where stems were clearly dead or shriveled, with no signs of life, I removed them. Once the shrub leafs out, it becomes much more difficult to access and remove interior dead wood.

I also left some foliage at the base. A late frost is still possible, and this variety can be more sensitive. That layer offers some protection.

Springtime tasks accumulate as the weather warms, and some dilemmas occur.

One that came up this week is with the early-blooming hellebore.

It is common to remove last year’s foliage around the crown of blooms. With bulbs emerging elsewhere in the garden, there is also a clear necessity to remove the surrounding leaf layer left from fall. These tasks begin to compete. There is only so much time in a garden.

With hellebores, foliar removal serves a few purposes. One is aesthetic: removing winter-damaged leaves to highlight the blooms. Another is preventative. This is the time of year when fungal issues such as leaf spot can develop, particularly in damp conditions between about 5 and 15 degrees Celsius.

In Grimsby, conditions this week have hovered closer to zero to five degrees, with occasional shifts above and below. This places us just ahead of that fungal window.

So the timing becomes clear.

By prioritizing general leaf removal, I free emerging bulbs and at the same time reduce moisture sitting around the hellebore foliage. Air moves more easily. The conditions for early leaf spot are less likely to form.

The hellebore leaves can wait. Once temperatures move into that fungal range, they can be removed then.

Timing is not abstract. It has real effects on the garden.

Knowing what causes what takes time. But once seen, small actions begin to carry more weight. You do less, and it does more.

Act where it matters. Leave what can wait.

Plants

Before plants arrive, a garden is a meeting of land and a gardener, held as a kind of dream. Where they meet, the dream is planted, and plants happen. They are the response to the conditions. They are the effect.

Plants express the garden continuously. As conditions change, they change. Water ebbs and flows, temperatures rise and fall, a gardener comes and goes. Plants respond. They are not static. They adapt. They are effects living in time.

When we talk about plants, it is easy to lump them into one group. But there is little use in talking about plants in general. They may be similar, but they are not the same. Each plant carries its own adaptations, and will respond to its situation differently.

The response of plants may not be verbal, but it is visible. Form, growth, timing, change, these responses are physical. The same plant will express itself differently in different conditions. Sometimes a difference of a few feet is the difference between growth and death. The signal is physical change.

To read plants, two things matter: attention and time. Attention asks, how is the plant, right now? Time elaborates. Repeated attention reveals change. Without time, attention gives the gardener only a snapshot, an image without context. There is no reference for what the plant usually does. But time, without a gardener’s attention, leaves the plant to its own devices. It may grow. It may also overgrow. Plants do things when they are unattended.

An attentive gardener who visits a garden’s plants over time is well set to shape their lives. But that influence is never total. A gardener can guide, but there is no complete command of plants. Plants, as expressions of changing conditions, will always change themselves. Years bring different patterns of rain and temperature, and plants will express those. Your judgment of a plant’s situation will always be necessary, and always incomplete. And that is okay.

Spending time with plants reveals how plants live in time. This life is slow and cyclical. Trees outgrow humans, and sometimes our dwellings. Plants do not hurry, but they do not delay.