Anyone for a Virtual Garden Club?

There's another great time for a garden club. You won't have experience with many of those plants that sound tempting. Sure - the catalog says it's hardy in zone 5 - but do you know how many different kinds of zone 5 there are? Some that are very dry and others that are incredibly humid. Some zone 5 gardens are near the sea and demand plants that are salt-tolerant. Some have incredibly hot summers, and others are relatively tolerable. So plants that may thrive in one zone 5 garden may be pallid and sickly in another. How will you know the difference unless you can compare notes with other gardeners? That topic is good for several meetings, too - and can save you a lot of money on plants that simply will not perform for you.

So - you get your advice, you decide which plants you can't live about that can live with you - and then comes the age-old question - where are you going to put them? What will they look good with. I know I spend a lot of my winters designing gardens and plant combinations in my head. But it's even more fun to toss the subject out and let others give their suggestions. And it's fun to see what they are planting and give them some ideas of your own. That's right - time for another meeting.

Since we are indoors so much now, there ought to be time to curl up with some good books - some of them garden-related. There seem to be thousands of gardening books out there - some better than others. Many are invaluable references and others are simply great reads. Some will help us with design dilemmas, while others may be too high-flown for our budgets, or too formal, casual or whatever. It really helps to get others opinions and to share the books that you have enjoyed the most or found most useful. You could probably share these kinds of recommendations all year round - but right before the holidays it's a great idea because then you will know which books to put on your wish list. Or which would be best suited to a friend's gardening tastes and needs.

And of course one great thing about garden clubs is that often they trade more than information. Sometimes they trade plants, or seeds and bulbs. And while state laws may prevent us

Go To Page: 1 2 3