You might not think it but the best time to do certain jobs in the garden is winter. Admittedly there’s not much to encourage one outdoors, the prospect of dislocating a shoulder slipping on the deck or patio is usually sufficient deterrent. But if you can brave it there is no better time to do certain jobs because there is no pressure. I’m talking about relocating beds, redesigning borders, moving structures, changes to the framework of the garden. Jobs that get put back on the long finger when the growth of spring kicks in.
Now is the ideal time to get out, take a look around when everything is stripped back and you can see what’s what. Now is the time to make those decisions and make the changes before spring.
Winter in many ways is the ideal time of the year to be in the garden. It’s alive with atmosphere and possibility but inactive enough to allow you to enjoy it stress free. The other seasons tend to be full on. Winter is about relaxing, re- grouping, taking stock ,planning, strategising for the year ahead.
In my own garden I have been intermittently pondering a few big decisions regarding the relocation of a few things, the vegetable patch, the chicken run, the glass house. I’ve also been scratching my head for a while now about the optimum location for an old shipping container I have acquired and am planning to refurbish.
The next few weeks are the ideal time to decide such matters. The garden is threadbare and stark , it’s easy to visualise these new arrangements without all that pesky foliage, vegetation and growth getting in the way. Let’s face it what else are you going to be doing in the next few weeks? You’ll be craving an excuse to get outside to get some air and a few brisk perimeters of the house can only help in working off the Selection Box you had for breakfast.
By the way it’s not the garden that dies a death in winter , it’s us. The garden is just preparing for what’s coming, hunkering down and storing its energy for the season ahead. Regrouping. That’s precisely what we should be doing. Not ignoring it altogether. Planning, considering, reflecting, visualising, brainstorming in the chilly calm of a December morning. What could be better? Often the hardest part of a job is in the preamble, the cogitation and the resolution of what exactly the plan is. Get that done in these quiet days and get a jump on it when it comes time for getting stuck in.
This is not time to be squandered, it can be used very judiciously. Winter, far from being a time of closing things down, should be inverted and viewed as the opportunity you have needed to open things up, to explore new paths and plan new beginnings.
Winter , it’s worth keeping in mind, is the time when the built or man made elements of the garden come into their own. We talk about year round appeal but from a planting perspective if you were to take away the odd dodgy old evergreen that every garden seems to have what really is there to appeal in the dim December days? Not much. That’s when the follies, the pavilions, the stonework, the arbors, the frozen ponds can step up to breach the atmospheric deficit. The decision to paint that shed aqua blue doesn’t seem quite so crazy now when you feel the lift it can give a tired spirit persecuted by perpetual winter darkness.
The plants will be back soon enough to retake centre stage but for now let everything else have the spotlight. Each season provides its own platform for the different elements in your garden. Even the winter. The garden is still there, it’s not going anywhere but it seems we have.
Reconnect, get out there. Potter away the pudding.
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