Master Gardener Shows

Several of us are looking forward to the Porter County Master Gardener Show this weekend in Valparaiso, Indiana. The show features garden product vendors, a seed and bulb exchange, photo competition, and fantastic speakers. All for just $7, what a deal. We are also looking forward to the Putnam County and Madison County Advanced Master Gardener Training programs coming up in February. If you want info about these and other Master Gardener activities around Indiana go to the Purdue Master Gardener Program site and click on Upcoming Events. Putnam County's program is not listed there and I haven't found a reference to it on any other websites. If you want info about it send me an email and I'll forward the flyer. Next week, I'll post a report from the Porter County show. And hopefully I'll have my copy of Tracy DiSabato's new book which I will review.

The Start of a New Season

Hope is one of the hallmarks of a true gardener. We put things in the earth and hope for their success despite the natural forces working against them and sometimes our lack of commitment to their care. But an even stronger hallmark of a gardener is faith. Faith that each new spring gives us the chance to try again, to see progress and perhaps a better crop of blooms or produce. The catalogs have started to arrive which means that chance to try again is upon us.

Those of us who actually experience winter take this time of year to enjoy the extremes of our gardens. Today, we have snow and temperatures falling. It's a good time to go outside and take stock of landscape plants that we may ignore during the glory of summer. The lack of green and bright, colored blooms puts the landscape to the test. From several windows in the house I get a shot of these beautiful Chamaecyparis pisifera. They are either 'King's Gold' or 'Mops'. Their bright yellow foliage is such a pick me up on sunless winter days, and their cuttings are always the first to run out during wreath making classes. Everyone who can should find a place for this plant in their landscape, preferably where it can be seen from a window.


Those of you who do not get cold enough temperatures during the winter miss out on the other personality of Sedum rupestre 'Angelina'. So long as the deer don't nibble it back, you get a lovely show of coppery colors and a subdued chartreuse. It has a lovely texture that holds light snows well and brightens up the winter garden. Many of us think of Sedum acre when someone suggests using a sedum in the garden. That's the one that was in every grandmother's garden and turns up at garden club plant sales. But there are so many lovely sedums available now, and you should make a point to include them when possible.

I went to visit one of my gardening friends, Barb, the other day. I hadn't been to her garden yet, and it was an absolute delight even in the dead of winter. She is one of those people who gets the job done no matter what the task is. She and her husband have a woodland treasure in a neighborhood of more trendy landscaped homes. There is hardly any lawn at all which I am gradually working towards. Side note: We maintained a lawn area suitable for football, Frisbee, and short golf drives while the kids were at home, but now it's mine! Anyway, study this view from Barb's breakfast nook.


She and her husband kept noticing things going on either in the pond or around the feeders the whole time I was there. This is what gardening is about. Shaping the environment around you in a way that engages you with it. Watching a living, growing landscape is like watching children grow up. You look back at old pictures and see how much it changes from season to season and over the years, and you hope that it will stir something good in yourself and others who see it, and you have faith that the new spring will give you another chance to try new things.