Signs of climate change are everywhere you look.

AH, SPRING!

by Peter W. Gribble
The signs of spring are adding up, coming along as they always do . . . March may have a final wallop up its sleeve – a cold snap with snowfall – but it’s merely winter’s last hurrah. If anything, it’s just another reassuring indicator adding to the mounting evidence of our West Coast’s slow and stately march into spring. On a stroll of the neighborhood, you note the snowdrops are finishing, the first early daffodils are blooming, the swelling tips of trees and shrubs, the scented air. It’s warm on the sunny side of the street and you open your jacket. You peer into the gardens along the walk, seeing how things are coming along, what further growth has happened, the expected familiar changes showing from day to day, week to week . . . a typically evolving, no-surprises spring . . .

As if nothing happened last year . . . the summer fire season where a town burst into flame and November’s downpours caused devastating floods. These, too, are signs – not of spring. Unprecedented signs, yes – yet not entirely surprising.

The signs have been accumulating for decades. Years ago, researchers at the University of Washington State examining deep lake sediments, suspected the west coast was on the threshold of a prolonged drying period. With global warming and climate change, signs have proliferated that this drying is encompassing the entire west coast of North America.

I’ve kept up with each new study and each new publication, but it’s only in the last few years that the information has influenced my gardening choices. Very gradually, year by year, I’ve been changing my garden over into a Water-Wise plant garden.

I don’t remember the first time I saw the phrase “Water Wise” but it wasn’t recently. Nor, I think, is the term all that old. What is clear is most garden centers now have sections or at least plants labeled “Water Wise,” what is still called “Drought Tolerant.” The “Dry and Sunny” section of a nursery is an expanding niche. Happily, there is a large range of choices gathered from around the world to fill it.

Even in gardens of modest size, you probably already have some, such as sedums, hens and chick succulents, artemisia and salvias. If you are starting, ornamental grasses [see Pots and Plants, July 2020] are a good beginning, depending on your space and exposure.

When I worked in the hard goods department at the garden center, this included the seed racks. Again, as last year, some customers joke they want to plant their COVID Victory garden.

At the racks, a young couple, a new generation of gardeners, are starting out. They’re excited and want to grow everything and ask for advice. Their shopping basket has close to thirty packages. “The West Coast Seeds Gardening Guide is an excellent reference. You’ve a great selection here, but how much space do you have?”

I get out my tape measure. “You say your row of carrots will be four feet long? Did you want to plant a row every three weeks for a longer continuous harvest? You’ve picked five varieties of carrots. That’s a lot of carrots. How many rows can you have if . . .” and so it goes. Their large stockpile of seeds eventually winnows down to a more manageable, economical, less wasteful effort. Their enthusiasm, far from being dampened, has grown more confident.

COVID has intensified the interest in gardening, but gardening was already shifting before then. Pesticides have disappeared from the shelves. Our understanding of the soil has improved. “Double digging” for example, was once a standard for digging garden trenches. It involved turning the soil two shovels-full deep as you dug a vegetable bed. We now know that this disrupts and destroys the essential microbial, mycorrhizal network layer in the soil’s upper inches that interacts with the plant’s root system helping it absorb nutrients.

Over the last few years, I’ve been gradually leaving my garden alone and becoming less interventionist. It’s a gentle, gradual but observant abandonment. A little trim here, weeding, pulling up the yearly forest of maple sprouts. With a few provisos, I’m letting Nature reclaim what was hers. It’s a form of low-maintenance gardening.

Talking to older gardeners, they say the same. They wait out March to determine what plants survived, what suffered winter damage and what died. “At my age, the only reason to garden is to replace something that died. I’ve no room left. So if everything survived, I’ll do a little pruning, bit of tidying, check the irrigation, mow the scrap of lawn I’ve got left, then let the garden take care of itself. But this winter, one of my rhododendrons kicked the bucket. I’ve yanked it out and getting something to replace it.”

A visit to the garden center in March multiplies the signs of spring. The parking lot is full. You see shoppers wheeling their carts full of products out to their car; they load up, drive away and you pull into their spot. Time to look for the replacement plant. “Just a quick in and out”, you tell yourself. Full of resolve, you walk past the gift items, the pyramids of pots, the seed racks and the fertilizer shelves, and the tool wall. You smell the potted hyacinths before you see them, tables of cheerful primulas are blooming their little hearts out and . . . “Oh, probably need to get a bag of soil amender . . . and a bag of mulch for that bald patch around the ferns”. . . you step out into the nursery/perennial section.

Tidy flats of sturdy ground cover plants line the tables. The blooming evergreen clematis are stunning in their cascading tresses of blooms – a bit past its prime – but no, you’re off to get one decent-sized rhodo or something similar.

Fig trees and others are leafless today, but greenery and fruit are sure to follow.

“These camellias look nice . . . pretty . . . look at all the buds coming on this one . . . hmm . . .”

Stacked on pallets, fruit trees are potted up. A staff person is unstacking them and lining them up for easy browsing. Ornamental cherries stand in leafless promise. One-gallon blueberry plants are everywhere. Fig trees are in. Everything is bare stem – not a green leaf in sight. Staff members are unloading perennials from several wheeled racks and pricing them. “Looks like they’ve just received these . . . oh, these are nice . . . the grass section is limited . . . have to come back in a month or so . . . “

To your question of the busy but friendly staff person, “Water plants? Won’t be in until, oh, maybe mid to late April ... Rhodos? Over there along the fence on the right.”

The azaleas, some ablaze in bloom, the rest full of buds, are being loaded up on four large carts with swift efficiency by two people who look like a landscaper and her assistant. As the table empties, it appears they are taking fifty. “Are you getting any more?” she asks the staff person. “Yup, another shipment‘s coming Tuesday.”

You wander the Rhodos. They’re tempting but “ ... Maybe I should plant something else instead ... those camellias will be spectacular in another month . . . oh, are those small-leafed hollies over there? . . . with berries – a longer season of color . . . “

Just like the young first-time gardeners and their vegetable plot, beautiful, tempting plants are ambushing you. Your pace slows.

“Hmm. This is new. I’ve not seen this variety before.”

Before you know it, you’re asking yourself as you push your cart towards the till, “What am I doing with all these plants? Only one died!”

Ah, spring!