By Sue Healey

April 2024

“April, come she will.”

“When streams are ripe and swelled with rain”. So sings Art Garfunkel in one of my favourite songs of the season (there are few). That pure, crystalline voice always evokes pictures of snowbanks dripping into rushing waters under a brilliant winter sky. As March leaves us, cold and damp with a final, inevitable, dumping of snow, and April is forecast to be rainy, there won’t be many brilliant skies but plenty of swollen streams.

All that water has me thinking and digging into rain gardens. I’ve been hearing the term more often in the last few years, usually in relation to native gardening and urban runoff. On a late winter day, watching the water rush down my street and into the storm drain, I decided to explore a gardener’s way to save that water.

A rain garden is simply that, a garden designed for the rain. More nuanced, it is a collection of plants designed to collect and filter water that would otherwise run overland, into storm drains and eventually into our waterways. This water often sweeps pollutants, debris, and soil along with it leading to the poisoning of aquatic flora and fauna. Rain gardens also help prevent the erosion that so often happens with sudden and intense rainstorms. Usually consisting of plants that tolerate periods of heavy moisture, native species are particularly well suited for rain gardens. Best situated away from buildings, they can be incorporated into areas where water naturally pools, using what is already a feature of the landscape. Gardens can be as large or as small as needed and are relatively easy to achieve; dig out a concave area, partially backfill it with a mixture of black earth and sand, and plant with your choice of species. The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) has published a comprehensive rain garden guide with detailed plans that are easy to understand and free to print or download. They also offer a long list of recommended plants that range from shrubs such as red-osier dogwood (Cornus sericea) and elderberry (Sambucus canadensis) to low and tall grasses like tufted hairgrass (Deschampsia cespitosa) and big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii). There are also numerous flowering plants to choose from; butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberose), spotted Joe-pye weed (Eupatorium maculatum), New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) and black-eye Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) to name a few of the sun lovers. If you have a more shaded spot, white turtlehead (Chelone glabra) will do better.

My rain garden would be situated in the area where my rain barrel overflows. I’ve been eyeing it up for the last few years and think it has the potential to be a great rain garden. There is already a small garden in the space, but it’s in need of an overhaul. I grow a number of the plants mentioned in the guide and may end up moving some divisions of Joe-pye weed and black-eyed Susan. I am however, intrigued by those grasses and may choose a variety of natives, perhaps mulched with gravel to further help drainage. This garden would share the space with a clothes line that has no plans of moving. Low profile grasses that wouldn’t  interfere with waving sheets may be the answer to more than the overflowing rain barrel. As always, any digging would be done after good research and only when the soil is workable. As tempting as April sunshine can be, soil temperatures need to be warm enough to accept those eventual additions.

Regardless of what I choose to plant, the rain garden will help store the water I can’t. The garden will save, purify it, use it to nourish the plants that will in turn, help feed and house pollinators and who will, in their turn, become food for a host of other bird and wildlife, who will continue the cycle. April showers will then bring so much more than just flowers.  

And before any major digging, I’ll be doing some warmup with my local Horticultural Society. April’s speaker is Chris Streib, registered physiotherapist, and owner of Talbot Trail Physio. Chris will show us how to “Bend like a Sapling, Not Break like a Twig…”

Meeting begins Tuesday, April 2, at 7:30pm. All welcome. Membership $20/year or $4/ meeting. Come as a guest, stay as a member.

By Sue Healey

March 2024

The season begins.

March always has me scanning the horizon. On the commute home, on trips with my family, anywhere I can, I track the setting sun for signs that the days are finally getting longer. Each day, the sun is a little higher over the barn roofs. More daylight and warming weather kindles in me a restlessness and a familiar urge to get into the garden. I want to dig. Alas, March is too soon to be out, no matter the air temperature. You’ll do more harm than good in that cold and still slumbering soil.

Some gardeners feed that need by nursing seedlings and have been at it for weeks. While I thoroughly encourage the endeavour, limits to time, space, and attention affect how much each of us can grow. March can leave us feeling a bit lost and left behind. What are we to do with our fingers itching for the dirt and noses twitching for the smell of earth and water?

I look again, to my windowsills, scanning my ledges for those plants in need of repotting. The pining or wilting, the ones practically climbing out of their pots. Or the cuttings by my kitchen window that have been rooting in water all winter. These are the first. And this is the beginning of the season for me. I start small, and ease into, stretch out, my favourite time of the year. Larger specimens I leave for later, when the outdoors is an option and the mess matters less.

This year I have a very divergent group that needs my attention; a sansevieria cylindrica (African Spear) which wants fast draining but rich soil, a ficus benjamina (Fig tree), and offshoots of pilea peperomiodes (Money plant), both of which need moister soil. Whatever the mix of plants is, there are a few basic rules that generally apply and make a good starting point if you are new to the game. As with most things in life, there are exceptions and good research is always recommended.

Plants should generally be given a new and larger pot when the roots have filled their container. Young plants and fast growers usually require an annual repotting but as they mature, can live in their quarters for two to five years before needing another move. You will eventually be restricted by pot size. All containers, whatever they are made of, should have drainage holes to allow excess water to escape and be only one size larger than the old one. Too big and roots cannot use up all the water they are sitting in before rotting. Potting soil that is lightweight, sterile and contains a slow-release fertilizer will be suitable for most plants. There are a few; orchids, cacti, and succulents, that prefer a specialty mix of soil which are also readily available. Plastic sheets on tables and floors help protect surfaces and make cleanup a breeze. The actual trick of repotting is easy; fill your new pot ¼ of the way with new soil, remove the plant from the old pot. If the roots are twining in a circle, gently tease them apart. Place the plant in the new pot ensuring that the crown or stem sits at the same soil level as it did in the old pot. Add more soil around the root ball, gently compacting it with your fingers as you fill it. Water thoroughly to remove air pockets and add soil to any pockets revealed. Put them in some light and leave them be for a week before you water again.

You can do as many as you like for as long as you have supplies. Over the years I have repotted the same plants many times and each time I’m amazed at their growth, at their continued beauty and I’m always grateful that I was able to be a part of it. It’s a good way to scratch that itch in March, enough of a start until true spring arrives.

For more answers to these and other burning questions, join the Tillsonburg Horticultural Society on March 5th for their monthly general meeting featuring the “March Plant Madness and the Panel of Knowledge”

Meeting begins at 7:30pm, all welcome. Membership 20/year or $4/ meeting.