It’s time to fill your cart with plants for the patio and balcony — but try not to panic!

MAY MADNESS!
Slow Down, Relax, Enjoy!

by Peter W. Gribble

It’s another crazy year for gardening.

Last year after the brief late winter lockdown, gardening was deemed an essential service and garden centres and plant stores reopened. A few garden centre colleagues of mine were initially puzzled by it. “Yes, agriculture is an essential industry, but gardening?”

The reason: many people rely on it to supplement their food supply. Good thing for the economy too, because last year set record sales day after day in the garden centre where I work. I heard the same story from every other garden establishment I talked to.

This year has exceeded last year, but it’s not all about keeping the food supply afloat.

You are isolated, stuck working from home, staring out the window at the patchy lawn proliferating with dandelions and buttercups … or sitting at the home desk looking at the balcony with potted plants long dead. Something has to be done.

Since last year’s vacation money never got spent, it won’t take much to spark up a gardening space no matter what the size. A single hanging basket can change a tiny balcony into a visual oasis. If your balcony is on the shady side, a fuchsia hanging basket will do the trick, but buy fuchsias quickly. They generally show only once and briefly during the gardening season, usually before Mother’s Day, and that’s it.

A basket of flowering fuSchias is lovely, hanging from the eaves or placed on a table or other location.

If you want to make your own, even fuchsia basket stuffers disappear fast and once gone, are gone until next year. If you lack hooks to put them up on, remove the hangers from the baskets and situate these on a table or riser to the best vantage.

From February onwards the garden centre staff has been saying, “Every day’s a Saturday!” There’s always a five to six o’clock surge. People continue shopping even after the overhead announcement declares, “The store is now closed. Please take your final purchases to the cashier …” forcing the staff to stay late beyond their shift. Some staff members come in at seven in the morning just to restock tables and water the plants as there is no time or available staff to do this after the store opens.

February’s premature spring - nothing to do with the weather but people’s urgent need to garden – was a warning of how the season would unfold. One centre I know of has had seven COVID cases over the winter and spring months, leaving them very short-staffed.

Vendors and buyers don’t always understand what’s needed. One hardware store’s garden department had more pansy hanging baskets than ever. The supervisor said, “God, I’ve done this for years and they still won’t let me do the ordering! We need more summer baskets, not these.” I said to her, “Given the frenzy, they’ll all sell anyway.” She sighed and agreed.

This is the heated period of shortcut gardening: hanging baskets, six-pack veggies, basket stuffers, one and two-gallon pot tomatoes each with their own tomato cage and fruit ripening on the vine, and instant lawns created by unrolling a few rolls of turf. We can barely get products on the tables or set out on the floor before they’re snatched up. Some plants don’t even make it that far. “Excuse me, do you have another one of these?” “Let me check; the truck just pulled in. I’ll be several minutes if you can wait …”

Ever seen how some plants come in? Rolling off the trucks are fleets of large multi-shelved six-foot-tall metal carts stuffed with plants arrayed in battalions - retail’s version of the D-Day landings. These reinforcements are not always priced, which slows down their offloading onto the tables. If the place is short-staffed, that’s one less person on the floor helping customers.

Sad to think Mother’s Day will be part of the madness, to say nothing of the May long weekend. If you need to shop, plan to do it long before those dates, preferably in the mornings as line ups are shorter, customer count numbers are generally lower, and you’re more likely to get help if you need it. Of course, observe all the mask and social distancing protocols as the increasingly apparent aerosol nature of the virus is something to take very seriously.

There are rumours the season will end early like last year, which was in late May. Last year, buying habits changed with the average daily sale surging higher as customers, wanting to avoid the line ups, came once to buy everything they felt was needed for the entire growing season, making for fewer return visits and this seemed to shorten the season. However, every year is different. The line ups are better organized this year and move faster while products arrive more consistently. In 2016 the season peaked on May 24 and the seasonal workers were being laid off, but this was due to the sudden record-breaking temperatures that year.

Each year you never know what to expect until it happens … making hindsight always right.

If you have grand schemes or ambitious ideas for the garden, forget about hiring landscapers to draw up the designs and do the installations and heavy lifting. They are unavailable, overworked with more jobs than they saw in a single season in any prior year. In March, a friend phoned from Toronto to ask if I would design or at least help out with a client who had moved out to the Lower Mainland. Unfortunately, I couldn’t. She told me her landscape business was swamped and she had hired extra staff to keep up. She judged she was easily a month behind schedule and already booked solid well into mid-summer. In March! We laughed when we both said in the same breath, “Well, why wait for spring!”

If you realize you should’ve bought three plants instead of two or you are one or two rolls short for a full lawn of turf, should you go back or wait another day? These days, product sells out fast, but gardening shouldn’t revolve around panic buying.

If you have a water feature, keep an eye out for avian visitors as the birds of May arrive for the summer, or on their way further afield.

If you find yourself peering around the garden wondering what is missing … instead look up from your worries. May is the Great Billion Bird Fly-Through. Every year as early as May 1 and sometimes as late as mid-May I spot bright yellow little birds with distinctive black markings flitting among the bushes. They have a quick happy flutter in the pond fountain before resuming their mad dash north for the best nesting sites. While they resemble American Goldfinches in the bird guides, their markings are different. Also in the sky, if you’re awake at three in the morning and can’t sleep, go outside and gaze upon Gemini high overhead this time of year. The big bright star south of it is Procyon in the constellation Canis Minor. And at night, the well-watered garden smells wonderful.

So slow down, sit, take a deep breath, relax and enjoy your garden no matter what time of day or night, how small or unfinished you might think it is.

In the desert of our COVID ravaged world, savour your oasis.