Gardeners' Holidays 2020: Renewal

Although I'm not putting too much stock in Punxsutawney Phil's prognostications of an early spring, I can definitely say that the first Gardeners' Holiday of 2020 was much warmer than it was in 2018 or 2019. Even in the morning, the temperature was well up into the 40s, and we didn't even get chilly as we headed out into the yard to kick off our gardening year by pruning the plum trees.

As I predicted, this job has become much easier than it was the first time we attempted it in 2018. Many of the most problematic branches on the trees have already been cleared away, so it was mostly smaller offshoots that we had to lop off this year, not whole limbs. We cleared out the ones that were overhanging the sidewalk and the flagstone path, then pruned away any that were in direct contact with other branches and any that were pointing inward toward the center of the trees. In the end, we cleared away enough branches to make three small bundles for burning in our backyard fire pit once the weather warms up...

...and to make an indoor display to tide us over until we have flowers to gather in the spring.

And not a moment too soon, it appears, because our backyard trees look like they're ready to jump the gun on spring any time. When we went out in the back to put away our tools and the bundled sticks, I saw that our cherry bushes are already starting to bud. Which leads me to hope that the marmot soothsayer was right after all, because otherwise, these poor little tender buds are going to get nipped as soon as winter reasserts itself.

Pruning the plums was only the first of many spring chores we have to do this year. We also plan to take the trimmer to the big hedge in the front yard and cut it down to a size that won't obstruct our path to and from the house. (If taking that much off the bushes turns out to be fatal, just as well; we'll pull them out completely and replace them with a nice little low fence that doesn't need nearly as much maintenance.)

And we have to pull out some garden soil and bake it to start our seeds in — not just our vegetable seeds, but also the flower seeds for the new flower garden I'm planning to put in this spring. Since our various attempts to plant a wildflower bed (first with a mixture of annual and perennial seeds that caused the plot to be overrun with bachelor's buttons, then with an all-perennial mixture that produced only scattered blossoms that quickly gave way to weeds) have been unsuccessful, I've decided to clear the entire bed and plant larger clumps of specific plants that I know are well adapted to clay soil. I've selected five plants:

• Confetti Cake hellebore (Lenten rose), which will produce white-and-purple blossoms starting as early as February;
• Early Sunrise coreopsis, with 18" tall yellow blossoms from April through July;
• Summer Pastel yarrow, with 1-to-2-foot blooms in yellow, pink, and red from June through September;
• Purple confeflower (echinacea), which will produce tall 2-to-4-foot purple blossoms from July through September and can go to seed after that, becoming an attraction for goldfinches;
• Autumn Joy sedum (stonecrop), with 2-foot-tall pink-and-copper blossoms through the end of October;
• And, to fill in the gaps, little clumps of  6-inch, yellow-and-purple Johnny-Jump-Ups (violas).

If this works, it will give us continuous blooms from February through October, so our garden will only be bare from November through January. We've ordered the hellebore and sedum plants from Wit's End Gardens (the only place I could find both of them), to be delivered in the spring, and we bought seeds for the rest along with our yearly order from Fedco. We'll start a couple of seeds for each plant, and when the others arrives, plant them in large clusters throughout the bed and fill in the spaces between with mulch to combat weeds. And if that doesn't work, we'll at least be able to tell where the actual flower clumps are, so we can identify the weeds and pull them out without taking the flowers with them.

All in all, we have our work cut out for us going into the 2020 garden season. There's more to be done than usual, but if it works out, we should have better results this year and every year going forward.