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Spring in Skagit Valley
Photo by John Holtman
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One of the first signs of winter's end is the emergence of the alder catkins, transforming the thickety woods into a soft mauve haze. Below its canopy the dense undergrowth of salmonberry, osoberry, wild rose, and snowberry become a suffused pointillistic delicate greening, with the osoberry's white drupes being the first flowers to unfurl. Peering back into the shadowy textural richness, down along the boggy swales, my eye is hungry to detect the first emergence of the huge yellow spathes of the skunk cabbage.
Overnight, it seems, the land explodes from brown to green...green so shocking in its intensity one is caught up short, confronted with a distant memory - can last summer seem so long ago? The robins and jays are not wasting a minute. Already they are tugging at the dry matted blades at the base of the blue fescue grasses (reason enough to grow these!), while the eagles cruise overhead trailing long sticks from their talons, making a bee-line for the huge nest in the cottonwoods along the edge of the river.
And for the gardener? Everything is happening at once. Soil to work up, compost to haul and turn into the rows, seeds and starts to press into the furrows. The usual attendant worries. Will we get another frost? Will the bunnies get in? And don't blink! Those innocent-looking little winter weeds can suddenly rise up in a huge succulent tidal wave if not addressed immediately. For the ornamental garden there is now a broad comfortable window for planting. Having finished the early bare-root planting, the pace can be much more leisurely. Plants sold in soil, in pots, can usually survive very successfully in those pots for months (as they do, sitting in the nursery), as long as they are watered and maybe fertilized.
If you are in the habit of buying on impulse - before you know just where or how you intend to use a plant (or many plants) - a designated plant holding area can be an invaluable part of the garden. The requirements for such a spot? A flat surface free of vegetation (such as concrete or bark chips) with simple frames that can contain groups of plants and keep the pots from tipping over in the wind, with proximity to a water spigot and sun (or light shade depending on the plants). A table surface that raises perennials above the slugs, snails and bunnies is a huge advantage.
As a designer, I frequently buy speculatively, knowing that when I find a gem of a plant it may be gone by week's end. As a result, I sometimes have hundreds of dollars in plants waiting to go out onto jobs, each of which must arrive at their destination in perfect form whether one day or three months after being purchased. As you can imagine, a well-designed holding area is of primary importance. We dreamer-gardeners are all subject to buying impulsively and getting ahead of ourselves. And though this has its hazards and we are burdened with guilt when we fail to follow through, to me this is so inherently a part of the creative urge that it would not be an option to curtail these enthusiasms. By consciously organizing - beforehand - a designated spot around this inevitability, we can celebrate these impulses and be superbly rewarded.
If you find yourself these days getting more intrigued by perennials as a part of the garden you are not alone. We are truly living through a revolution in the diversity and availability of garden perennials, and the magazines and books are full of amazing, dazzling demonstrations of the endless possibilities. Many among us have come from a tradition of gardens comprised of rather monotonous linear successions of dense, tight - preferably inert - shrub 'blobs', and perennials constitute an infinite bewildering world of unfamiliar material. I can, myself, acutely remember that feeling. There are many avenues to exploring the treasure trove of perennial wonders:
The most fun, of course, is wandering the nursery aisles, whether you're in a buying mood or not, taking in the feast, reading the tags, observing the contrasts and interplay of textures and colors, learning to recognize the species groupings, and the range of variations within these.
Books are another. Two fabulously indispensable references are The American Horticultural Society's "Encyclopedia of Perennials" (DK Books) and "Perennials: the Gardener's Reference" by our own NW plant gurus Carter, Becker, and Lilly (Timber Press). Check the nursery bookshelves for these.
Visiting as many public and private gardens as possible is also extremely inspiring and informative. There will be many garden tours to put on your schedule this summer, as well as the summer-long weekend open-house gardens organized through the Northwest Perennial Alliance.
As for the vegetable gardener, time is of the essence in April. Even if you are not subject to the anxieties, frenzy, and turbulent decision-making processes that can beset the commercial grower, nevertheless a significant aspect of producing your own edibles, even on a small scale, is the development of that exquisitely fine-tuned sensitivity for assessing - and acting promptly on - the variables involved in timing the planting of each crop. Soil temperature, day length, available heat units, pest and disease cycles - all these play into the equation to varying degrees for different food crops. It will come with experience - go for it!
April is the month for putting in all the so-called cool-weather vegetables. These include all the onion relatives, the cabbage family, all the salad greens, peas, and carrots. Wait until May, when the soil warms, for heat-loving tomatoes, peppers, squash, beans, and cucumbers. If you are a novice, don't be shy to use starts rather than seeds as they have already been through their most vulnerable stage. Start small. One 3 by 10 ft bed of fresh salad greens and some trellised peas can be so rewarding.
For you long-time veggie gardeners, here's to the great communion of souls as we all watch the sky, sift our fingers through the clods, wait for those first nubbins of asparagus to peek through the dark loam, and salivate in anticipation of that first rhubarb pie of the new season!
