MÉLANIe'S GARDENS

About forsythias, roses and winter rest

This week in the Niagara region, something changed in the gardens. Bright yellow bushes adorn the streets; forsythias are in bloom.

For gardeners, forsythias are a reminder that it’s a good time to do certain garden tasks, such as pruning rose bushes.

For me, forsythia also signals that we’re moving away from preparatory garden work and into early spring. In other words, it’s the real end of the winter pause.

Winter was a time of rest not only for the gardens, but also for the gardener. A time to break away from routine, from being physically in the garden, into a time of separation, peace, and quiet.

That shift from winter to spring, from non-action to action, is a cyclical one. One that, over the years as a gardener, I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know.

Winter rest can take a few forms.

Sometimes, while I’m away from the gardens, I’m really away. I’m thinking of things that don’t grow and bloom. I’m distracted by perhaps Kusama’s Mirror Room. I am away from the garden physically, but also in mind.

However, sometimes in winter, I find myself thinking of gardens, remembering the past season, or dreaming of what could come next.

But whether I’m away from gardens and thinking about them or not, I am not working in the garden, and so I’m not affecting what grows there.

After a couple of months of time away, being able to be in a garden and change things shifts the mode completely.

Now I am in gardens.

Sometimes, while I’m pruning standard hydrangeas, I’m thinking about the garden and its shape for years to come. Sometimes, while I’m raking, I’m thinking of other things, such as a mirror rooms.

But something has changed.

Now I can affect the garden. Now I’m in spring.

When I come back to gardens in spring, the break has given me fresh eyes and a fresh mind. Something that seemed like a difficult problem at the end of the season in fall now has a clear solution. I may not have thought about it explicitly, but the pause away has given me a chance to look anew.

In garden work, this pause is forced. In winter, I can’t dig and plants don’t grow, and so there is no way I can garden.
However, other creative tasks don’t have this embedded rhythm. I’ve found it beneficial in gardening, but it is helpful in other disciplines to take a step back in one way or another.

In visual arts, a common technique is to look at your work through a mirror, or upside down, or to step away from it. You are not changing the work. You are changing your relationship to it.

When writing this blog post, I jotted down a few ideas earlier last week and came back to it after a few days to fine-tune to edit. The days away made clear what was essential and what could be trimmed.

Short pauses are important and helpful, and relatively approachable to implement. However, longer pauses, such as a full winter, are also helpful.

I’ve taken a few months off of a project and come back to it with a clearer look at what really worked and what needed changing. Some things only become obvious with time.

It can be a little daunting to leave a project, especially one that you’re invested in, for a long period of time. Questions arise. Will I come back to it? Will I still feel motivated? Will this pause prevent me from completing it, or understanding what I meant in the first place?

Taking a break is not easy, and it requires trust.

This trust is not something that appears overnight. But taking small pauses and seeing their benefits compounds over time can lead to knowing that if you take a larger break, you will still be there, and the insights gained will benefit the quality of the work.

Some things will have to be let go of, and some things will rise clearly to the surface. It’s all part of the process.

So here in Grimsby, forsythias are blooming. It’s time to prune the roses.
There is an old, scraggly rose bush that I’ve been wondering about. I planted this rose late last year and didn’t know which way to take it.

With fresh eyes, I can now see which parts are to be kept, and which parts are to be removed. What shape I want this rose to be, and how it might frame the window behind.

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.