MÉLANIe'S GARDENS

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.

Techniques

When you stand in a space you would like to call a garden, tools at hand, you are at the threshold of action. You are where a garden becomes gardening.

Gardening develops where land, body, and tools meet. Techniques do not add a layer to the garden. They are where prior forces finally act together. Techniques are responses to existing conditions.

Whether you call them techniques, responses, or gardening, these actions originate in the conditions. They arise from awareness. Awareness of land, body, and tools is where action begins. Without attention, techniques degrade. What was once a sensitive response becomes a rote action, which loses sensitivity, then accuracy. In a garden, this shows. It shows through repetition.

Gardens are filled with repetition. Similar plants ask for similar actions. Seasonal patterns ask for patterned action. For a gardener, it is in this repetition of responses that familiarity is found. By repeating actions, we get to know them, where force flows and where friction arises. Techniques are not learned once and then refined. They are distilled from repeated action.

Repetition is not foolproof. Just as repeated action distills embodied knowledge, it can also reinforce friction. The difference is attention. Distilling techniques depends on awareness of feedback. Did a desired effect appear? Did it fail? What repeats is diagnostic.

This is where technique reaches its limit. It does not complete the garden.

Techniques are embodied knowledge. They do not hold that knowledge. A technique cannot tell you when to use it. 

That is up to you, the gardener.