GARDENING IN YOUR DREAMS

Winter time is always a quieter time of the year. Even in Southern California it is not as exciting or hospitible to be outside playing in our gardens. This is the time to plan, plan, and dream. When I am teaching classes on how to design your own garden, I usually love to start the teaching with a meditation where you imagine the garden of your dreams. Some people have a hard time with this and do the same sort of dreaming when they are looking in gardening books or magazines. When you are doing your dreaming, you may be thinking of a garden that is like a slice of an English country estate or you may think of a highly artistic creation like a New York pocket park. These two extemes and everything in between will give you the form of the garden that you are shooting for. If you don't know what form you would like to create, look to you house if you have chosen the house for the architecture and see what might fit with the land, neighborhood and structure of the house. If you didn't choose the house for its architecture, maybe you can think of what you love the best when you visit it. Do you love wild natural places or quiet simple meditative spaces? Everything is fair game for consideration when you are creating or changing your garden. My own garden has changed several times depending on new things that I have learned or new ideas that I have wanted to experiment with. Once you have the general feeling of the garden that you want, you need to think about the elements that you are going to include. The aspects of your garden that you should always think about are the colors, fragrances, touches,sounds, what wildlife you would like in your garden and what you remember from your childhood that you would like to incorporate into this garden. When thinking about colors, are you a hot or cool person are you excited about the hot range of colors- red, orange, yellow or do the cool colors of whites, purples, blues and pinks ring your chime. Fragrances are the most personal of all the senses. I have gone to gardens with clients to pick roses and seen that we have huge differences of opinion about what smells good. Touch in the garden comes in two basic forms. You can touch in the garden with your hands for instance Lamb's ears are so sweet and soft, Red fountain grass flowers are soft and prickly at the same time. The other form of touch is the visual touch where you match or contrast textures so that even though you aren't physically touching them, the sight of the plants makes you feel the textures. Touch really invites exploration in your garden. Sounds in your garden can be generated through animals or through man made things. I have six wind chimes around my house each with different melodies. Another wonderful sound generator can be a water fountain. In the vein of natural sounds, invite birds to enjoy your garden. You can do that by planting plants that attract them, trees for them to build their homes and by having a water source for them to enjoy. It may seem odd to consider the past when you are thinking of designing your garden but our memories are potent creators of what we like. Remember the wonderful plants of your childhood and bring some of them into your present garden for you to enjoy. Once you have planned your garden in your dreams, committ it to paper so that you can take the next step of finding all the elements for your garden. Generally, I don't recommend planting until the danger of frost is past. In the south, that could be as early as March 15 and as you go north, it is later.

Once you have figured out what you want for your garden, shopping can be as easy as turning on your computer. There are great places to learn about plants on the internet. As a professional, the sites that I use most often are San Marcos Growers, smgrowers.com, and Monrovia Nursery, monrovia.com. If you want to start from scratch there are wonderful seed catalogues that even catagorize their seeds according to sun and shade conditions like ambergategardens.com which specializes in growing perennials in cold climates. bluestoneperennials.com has a plant finder so you can choose the type, height, etc. waysidegardens.com is a classic nursery that offers lists of deer resistent plants for those who live close to nature. bountifulgardens.com features heirloom untreated varieties for sustainable agriculture. Good options for edible gardens are gurneys.com, cooksgarden.com, ediblelandscape.com, reneesgarden.com and seedsofchange.com. If you are planning to create a habitat where butterflies are welcome, you can check out thebutterflysite.com to see how to welcome them or go to parkseed.com and search for butterflies or hummingbirds for plants they like. Another great hummingbird site is rubythroat.org.

Another thought that you may want to incorporate into your planting plans is the idea of planting and gardening using the phases of the moon. Although there is no scientific evidence for this it is a practice that has been used for centuries with plenty of antidotal confirmation for the efficiency of doing this. Basically, as the moon is increasing, going from a new moon to a full moon, the best activities are to repot and groom houseplants, sow seeds of plants that grow above ground, fertilize, graft fruit trees and plant evergreen and deciduous trees. When the moon is waning, going from full to new the best garden work to do is plant bulbs, plant crops that grow below the ground, such as potatoes, carrots, weed, plant biennials and perennials because they need strong roots, eliminate slugs and prune shrubs.

Finally, when you are considering planting don't forget that this is a wonderful opportunity to improve your soil. Building good soil is a lifelong project to all good gardeners. I recommend that you use organic planting mix or potting soil whenever you plant. Watch for the ingredients in what you see as organic planting mix or mulch. Many of them have sludge as an ingredient which I consider to be less desirable. Good soil is the basis for happy plants!