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Winter Dreaming

© Mary Henry

Every year gardeners begin to look forward to the next growing season even as the current one is ending. The holiday frenzy usually causes a short interruption, but with the dawn of the New Year, the dream returns: Next year's garden will be the best ever.

My New Year's resolutions usually include grand plans to be the best gardener I can be, too. Taking a page from some management books, I have decided in the past to set goals, prioritize my efforts and have a plan for the season. Sometimes, I even get so far as to brainstorm on paper and start organizing the result into a plan but, like most January projects I take on, they fizzle and fade in the winter darkness as my ambition takes its annual midwinter nose dive.

Now that the flurry of resolution making is slowing down, I'm looking ahead to spring and planning to do it differently this time. Instead of setting myself up to fail, I'm going to dream of doing it right and let the vision and my garden be my guides when the sun comes back and brings spring with it.

As gardeners, the most important thing we can know is what our own garden is really like. It takes time to understand a garden just like it does to understand another human being. We need to suspend any expectations we have of it and learn what it can really be. If you haven't lived with your garden long, do the work you must to know it. Get your soil tested so you will know its pH, general level of fertility and percentage of organic matter. Study the structure and texture of your soil. It doesn't take a Ph.D. or a private eye. Just use a little elementary school science. Put a double handful of soil into a jar, add water, cap tightly and shake well. Tomorrow you will have clear layers to show you the relative amounts of sand, silt and clay your soil contains.

Next, make sure you understand your light and shade. If you are not out in your garden frequently, you may not be accurate in your estimation of how much sun or shade each area receives at different times of the growing season. This is a very important consideration.

Learn where the soil is moist and where it is dry. Are there places that are poorly drained or banks where the moisture runs off instead of soaking in? Where are the wind tunnels and the protected nooks? When you begin to understand these things about your garden, you can begin to dream about its possibilities.