MÉLANIe'S GARDENS

About spring pruning, hydrangeas and taking a step back

Early spring, before woody plants leaf out, is a time for preparatory garden work.

Pruning woody shrubs, like hydrangeas, can seem daunting at first. Before beginning anything, take a step back and have a look. What is the shrub you’re looking to prune?

With your full shrub in sight, perhaps at a distance, take a moment to observe it. Is it old or young? Has it been pruned recently, or is it a tangled mass of years of undisturbed growth?

There is no need to rush in. Taking a moment, perhaps even with a cup of tea in hand. Simply seeing what the shrub tells you is a way to begin.

If nothing is obvious, that’s perfectly normal. Without knowing where you’re headed, you can still explore.

After considering the shrub, take your pruners and step closer. Even if nothing obvious comes to mind, first reduce the decisions you’ll have to make. The three Ds of pruning: dead, diseased, and damaged.

Dead branches can often be identified easily. Their bark is shriveled, they are paler than surrounding branches, and if gently bent, they snap with a hollow sound. If unsure, prune off an inch at the tip. If the core shows green, it may still be alive. If not, it is clearly dead. Remove it.

Is anything diseased? Obvious cankers, blemishes, or signs of fungal growth should be treated with care. If a branch is diseased, disinfect your shears after each cut to prevent spreading it.

Finally, remove any damaged branches. This includes obvious breaks from winter or ice, but also branches that rub or cross. Over time, these will damage each other. Removing future points of damage is just as important as addressing present ones.

What this achieves is a reduction in choices. With fewer decisions to make, you can begin to see more clearly.

Step back again. Pause. Have a look at what your shrub looks like now.

This time, consider not only the shrub, but its context. Where is it? What is it doing in the space? Is it near a walkway, or part of a larger composition at a distance?

This is where the fourth D takes shape: design.

The hydrangea I’m considering today is planted close to a walkway, one of two lining the path. Behind it is a garage, and over time it has grown into the facade. It has also begun to push into the walkway.

Here, the goal is a narrower shape, one that rises upward rather than outward. It needs to remain thin between the walkway and the garage.

At this stage, it helps to understand how the plant grows.

This is a hydrangea paniculata. It buds at intervals, often in groups of two or three buds evenly spaced around the stem. From each bud, a new branch may form, and the direction of the bud is the direction of growth.

Pruning above a two-bud node may give you two branches. Above a three-bud node, possibly three. These buds often alternate direction along the stem, allowing you to choose future branch direction; whether growth moves into the walkway or runs parallel to it.

Some branches have grown sideways. Others are strong and upright. The upright ones, often with three buds, will form the main structure of the shrub going forward. These become load-bearing, shaping the plant over time.

These may be cut differently; lower, at a more intentional structural branching point, than smaller, twiggy growth.

When pruning, cut close to the bud. Leaving a longer stub results in dieback, which can invite insects or disease. A clean, close cut helps maintain the plant’s health.

With secateurs or loppers, keep the blade side toward the part of the branch you are keeping. This allows for a cleaner cut.

These design decisions are less obvious than removing dead or damaged wood. It is normal to pause, to step back several times, and reconsider.

Each cut changes the shrub. It changes the context for the next cut.

These decisions cannot be undone easily. A branch does not simply grow back.
Sometimes, there is no clear answer.
Shaping a shrub takes time. Often, it is a process that unfolds over years.

When you’re done, take a step back. Have a look. Notice what remains, and what may come.

You cannot fully predict how the shrub will respond, or which branches it will favor. You can only make a considered guess.
And when the decisions feel heavy, it is fine to stop. Sometimes the next correct move is not another cut, but to leave, and come back the next day.

Next year, in early spring, you will return. You will stand back again, perhaps with a cup of tea in hand, and look.

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.