Until very recently, I have thought of myself as a cold climate gardener. Now, faced with the challenge of hotter climates here one is forced to re-examine ones beliefs and ways forged in a cooler climate.
My struggle perhaps is not atypical of a new gardener faced with the daunting task of beginning a garden. For past patterns of tradition, what worked in a cold climate, does not work in a hot climate.
By hot, and I'm calling for the sake of this article and any discussions off this article; any growing situation the reader is in where summer temperatures frequently rise above the 30 to 32 plus degree Celsius mark and where winter temperatures rarely go below 5 to 6 degrees Celsius {with the occasional dip lower}.
I know these are somewhat arbitrary figures, but they will hold for folks living in Devonport generally and for gardeners both in Western Australian coastal cities and the general Eastern Seaboard of mainland Australia along with parts of New Zealand, along with the coastal regions of South Africa as well as a lot of the low lying regions of southern America, to name but a few regions readers reading come from.
Snowed in gardeners often dream of living in a warmer climate, but a warmer climate does not mean an easy Spring and Summer. It is no stroll when the mercury reaches over 40 C and plants and bulbs are scorched to ground level. Watering might help you think, so out you go; after fifteen minutes of breathing hot air and being hit by waves of either drying winds or humid heat eddies scorching the lungs, you are forced back indoors, resigned to the fading memories of the foolish snowed in gardener idly dreaming for warmer days.
Unlike me, hopefully you will be accustomed to the growing climate in the place you have decided to garden.
If you are, then commencing a garden is easy. If not, where at all humanily possible, try to contain your passions for planning and planting for at least a calender year. Visit local nurseries and garden centres, visit local parks and garden clubs and try not to let your eagerness to begin; mask the future.
Often, this eagerness can end up costing you a fortune in wasted product and labour.
It is not until you know first hand the angle of the sun during winter, which parts of the garden are in sun shadow and for how many months; can you begin to plan long term.
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