Garden Tips Newsletter
Garden Planning
for the New Year
January 5, 2009
It’s a new year and time to start thinking and planning
for the gardening year ahead. Get out a pencil and notepad and walk around
your landscape. You need the exercise anyway after all of that holiday
feasting! Make notes of what worked and what didn’t work in your
garden last year. Make sketches of the areas you want to change or expand.
Using these notes, start your wish list of plant material. You should have no problem choosing plants. I don’t know a gardener alive who isn’t inundated with seed and plant catalogs this time of year. All of them are loaded with pages of colorful, eye-popping specimens. The problem is to maintain some sense of control while looking through hundreds of pages of perfect plants. Although it will be a struggle, one which I admit I have lost occasionally, please don’t mindlessly order everything that strikes your fancy.
Consider the following questions before mail ordering any plant material:
1. Will it grow well in my climatic zone? (I don’t mean just barely survive, but thrive and live to bloom and multiply!)
2. Do I have a suitable place for this plant?
3. Is ordering by mail the most cost effective way to obtain this plant? Always check your local garden center or nursery first before mail ordering.
4. Do I honestly need this or have I let my imagination run wild!
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Lelia Scott Kelly, Ph.D., writes Garden Tips weekly and is a Horticulture Specialist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service. Her office is in the North Mississippi Research & Extension Center, Verona.