In the Garden: January

Nothing can really replace a human mentor when it comes to gardening. Many of us learned to garden working alongside parents and other people who took the time to demonstrate and to answer our questions. Some of those opportunities are still available through garden clubs and workshops at botanical gardens like Van Dusen Garden and the UBC Botanical Garden. If you are interested in exploring these opportunities, check out their websites in the spring to see what workshops they might be offering.

As for garden clubs, both our own Point Roberts Garden Club and our ‘sister’ South Delta Garden Club welcome guests when they have invited speakers. If you are on Facebook, it is certainly worth following both of them (as well as botanical gardens mentioned earlier) to keep abreast of programs open to the public. The speakers themselves offer great advice, but great advice is also available from other gardeners during the social session that follows the speakers. All you have to do is ask!

If the person you ask first doesn’t have an answer, then surely that person can point you in the right direction. In addition, both garden clubs offer handy resources through their websites. South Delta Garden Club, for example, publishes a monthly ‘To do list.’ And our own garden club provides a lot of handy links, as well as free books, magazines, and other materials at its meetings.

But if you want gardening advice in the depths of winter, the two best resources are the library and some specific websites. I personally use Davesgarden.com a lot. You can easily spend all day clicking through all its useful pages and blogs. The thing I find particularly useful about Dave’s Garden is its Plant Scout (found under Products & Sources).

If I am looking for an unusual plant or cultivar that I cannot find locally, I can enter the plant’s name in the search bar and Dave’s Garden will tell me who sells this plant. I can then search Dave’s Garden to find reviews of the vendor before visiting the vendor’s website or ordering from them.

If you are on Facebook, you can also follow a number of garden pages, and even use Facebook to keep abreast of gardening workshops and meetings, ask questions in gardening groups, or message clubs and page administrators for advice. Both South Delta and Point Roberts Garden Clubs have Facebook pages that you can follow. And, of course, each of these will occasionally share information that you might find interesting.

As much fun as it is to surf the internet from the comfort of your own home, it is equally pleasurable to spend an afternoon in our new library. Although Gardens West, the best gardening magazine for our area, is long gone and the library does not have a subscription to the entertaining GreenPrints: The Weeder’s Digest, our library does have a good selection of gardening magazines and their special editions. Country Gardens, Fine Gardening, and Garden Gate all offer a variety of articles on plants, gardening, and garden design. It’s difficult to choose which to read, so why not hop into the library and leaf through each before taking home the one that fits your fancy?

As for books, although there is a great selection that you can place on hold from other branches, our own collection is quite impressive. Reflecting interests of full- and part-time residents, there are many books on growing vegetables and on gardening in the Pacific Northwest. There are also some very specialized books that might pique your interest. One is Gardening for Birds, Bees, and Butterflies: I’m sure that our local beekeepers would be very pleased for you to read this book! Given that the Garden Club’s programs on pruning have been popular, I’ll also assume that many gardeners would be interested in The Complete Guide to Pruning Trees and Bushes.

Right now, I’m working my way through Homegrown Berries. This beautifully illustrated book is published by Portland-based Timber Press (always a solid source for gardening books tailored to the Pacific Northwest). This book has given me some good advice on how to revive my overgrown strawberry patch and how to keep a raspberry hedge tidy and productive. It provides instructions on preventing pests from attacking my red currants – the same advice it took me forever to track down using Google early this year. And should I want to turn my hand to growing my own blueberries, it provides counseling on cultivar selection, planting requirements, and caring for these shrubs. It even has a chapter on cultivars that do especially well in particular areas, so that I can now go on Davesgarden.com or check to see if Cloud Mountain Nursery in Everson has specific cultivars that I can order.

So use the winter months productively surfing and reading!