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Embracing the Shift: Adapting Gardens to Unpredictable Seasons
As the quiet season concludes, signaling the transition from winter to spring, gardeners anticipate the awakening of nature and strategize for adapting to increasingly erratic weather patterns. The stillness of winter, often marked by minimal birdsong beyond the occasional crow’s call or chickadee’s cheerful notes, gives way to the promise of returning melodies and vibrant life. While the subdued winter months offered a unique charm, the first hints of spring’s arrival, like the initial notes of a returning red-winged blackbird and snowdrops emerging from the earth, ignite a renewed sense of anticipation for the growing season ahead. Navigating climate change in your garden requires observation, adaptation and a willingness to experiment with new approaches.
Observing Nature’s Rhythms
Throughout the winter, the auditory landscape remained hushed. Heart-lifting birdsong was scarce. Only the periodic caw of a crow, the characteristic ‘chickadee-dee-dee’ of its namesake, and the surprisingly robust song of the Carolina wren, now a year-round resident on our Pennsylvania farm, punctuated the silence. The courtship calls of great horned owls, and the songs of wood thrushes or Baltimore orioles were absent. Yet, the subtle music of winter held its own quiet joy.
The First Signs of Spring
Recently, the inaugural sounds of our first returning songbird, a red-winged blackbird, reached my ears. Simultaneously, snowdrops began to push through the soil, heralding the approaching season of growth.
Garden Awakening and Lingering Winter
Just days ago, I relocated last autumn’s potted tulips and hyacinths from the barn’s unheated annex to the sunroom’s warmth, aiming to encourage early blooming. However, the vegetable plot remains an icy mire, and the flower beds, still blanketed under shredded leaves, exhibit scant indication of life. Burlap shrouds the boxwood, and snow fencing encircles trees and shrubs, intended to deter deer browsing.
Wildlife in Winter’s Grip
Undeterred, the deer—their coats now shifted from milk chocolate to a darker hue—breach our makeshift barriers and consume yew, euonymus, arborvitae, and, this past winter, even holly. Squirrels dart about, actively adding to their food caches, while chipmunks remain unseen, presumably still in their burrows, along with opossums, raccoons, and bears.
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Reflections on a Changing Climate
There was a time when a greenhouse seemed essential. Now, paradoxically, the desire to hibernate through winter, to pause from the demands of sowing, potting, and nurturing, takes precedence. Winter now offers an opportunity to walk through snow-covered woods, observe animal tracks, study ice formations on the pond, and connect deeply with the season’s essence. It becomes a time for fireside reading and reviewing seed catalogs, envisioning the coming year’s garden with the perennial gardener’s optimism for improvement. As Vita Sackville-West eloquently wrote:
The gardener dreams his special own alloy
Of possible and the impossible.
Facing Climate Uncertainty
Yet, the realm of the possible feels increasingly uncertain. Reflecting on the previous year’s challenging growing season prompts contemplation on adapting to the unfolding environmental shifts.
Last Year’s Unpredictable Growing Season
The preceding winter’s unusual warmth led to minimal dieback in shrubs, resulting in an unusually dense spring foliage—a welcome sight, yet far from typical. Spring’s abrupt heat wave eliminated the customary cool window ideal for transplanting. Determining optimal planting times for early-season, cold-hardy vegetables in 85-degree temperatures, or for setting out tender plants, became perplexing.
Shifting Plant Hardiness Zones
The familiar guideline, “after danger of frost,” now lacks clarity. My Plant Hardiness Zone recently shifted, reflecting a three-degree increase in the average coldest temperature since 2012. Even this updated guidance proved inadequate.
Extreme Weather Events
Mid-May felt akin to mid-June, followed by a hailstorm on May 29th.
Flood and Drought
Despite the erratic conditions, poppies were planted in April, favored by cooler weather, but subsequent floods, now a recurring threat from April through October, washed the seeds away. A drought ensued between June and November. Grass turned brown, and dogwood and tulip poplar trees shed leaves in July. The once-productive vegetable garden resembled cracked earth, the soil hardened to the point of impeding weeding.
Impact on Wildlife and Flora
Streams dwindled to dryness, an unprecedented sight in 36 years, leading deer to venture into the pond for water. Food scarcity drove them to our garage, where they consumed deer-resistant lavender. Forest walks revealed a striking absence of undergrowth, notably impacting a large patch of Canadian Wood Nettle, a crucial host plant for Red Admiral and Eastern Comma butterflies. Chanterelle mushrooms failed to appear in their usual locations. Concerns arose about the potential for spring streams to run dry.
Late Season Anomalies
Pennsylvania experienced record wildfires in the fall. Two lilac bushes, typically spring bloomers, unexpectedly flowered in October, and a late harvest extended into November, yielding meager results.
Gardening in the Era of Climate Change: A Confusing Puzzle
These experiences evoke a resemblance to the radio program “Piano Puzzler,” where a familiar melody is reimagined in a classical composer’s style, altering tempo, harmony, and mode, challenging listeners to identify the original tune and composer. Imagine “Hey Jude” in the style of Brahms. A sense of familiarity mixed with disorientation arises. Sometimes correct guesses emerge, often not.
Navigating Uncertainty in the Garden
Similarly, gardening amidst climate change presents a comparable puzzle: disorienting and reliant on guesswork.
Seeking Solutions for Home Gardeners
The question arises: what course of action should home gardeners adopt?
Expert Advice for Adapting to Climate Variability
“The only predictable factor is unpredictability,” notes Sonja Skelly, Director of Education at Cornell Botanic Gardens in Ithaca, N.Y. “Up here, it’s been equally chaotic.”
Early Planting and Row Covers
Last spring’s heat in Ithaca prompted early vegetable planting, two weeks ahead of the May 31st frost-free date. Despite subsequent extreme temperature fluctuations, plants established earlier fared better, while those planted on the target date experienced stunted growth and a poor season. Dr. Skelly emphasizes, “a valuable lesson.” Row covers, enabling earlier planting and season extension, are “becoming increasingly vital in climates like ours.”
Cover Crops for Soil Health
Cover crops, including millet, sorghum, and black-eyed peas, have proven successful at the botanic gardens. They enhance water retention, suppress weeds, reduce erosion, and limit detrimental soil microorganisms. Birds also benefit from these crops, Dr. Skelly adds.
The Three Sisters Planting Method
Dr. Skelly advocates for companion planting with what the Haudenosaunee people call the “three sisters”: corn, beans, and squash. This method surpasses monoculture cropping in per-hectare yield, she explains.
Drip Irrigation for Water Efficiency
Drip irrigation offers another effective solution. “It delivers moisture precisely where needed—at the roots,” Dr. Skelly states. Water is released gradually and efficiently, minimizing runoff compared to hand watering or sprinklers.
Community Knowledge and Observation
“Observe, document, inquire, seek answers,” Dr. Skelly advises. “What are neighbors observing?” She recommends leveraging local botanic gardens, public gardens, and nature centers, which are actively addressing these challenges. “Maintain information sharing with friends, family, and neighbors to collectively navigate these changes. This collaborative approach is crucial,” she emphasizes.
Deepening Plant Understanding
Dr. Skelly stresses the importance of home gardeners developing a profound understanding of their plants. “Climate change might compel us to know our gardens far more intimately,” she suggests. “We must.”
Embracing Citizen-Science in Home Gardens
Reliance on experts for responsible gardening practices—minimizing environmental harm, planting diverse native species for pollinators, embracing native “weeds,” companion planting, avoiding synthetic pesticides and fertilizers in favor of compost or homemade nettle and comfrey solutions, and seeking alternatives to plastic plant containers—has long been my approach.
Experimentation and Adaptation
However, the increasing complexities of gardening in a changing climate underscore the need for home gardeners to independently devise solutions. Given gardening’s inherent trial-and-error nature, heightened weather variability necessitates even more experimentation and personal research. Essentially, we must transform into citizen-scientists within our own vegetable plots and flower beds.
Collective Effort in a Changing World
Cornell Botanic Gardens features a climate change demonstration garden, but, in reality, our entire gardens are becoming living laboratories. Navigating uncharted territory together, we collectively explore this evolving world of cultivation, striving to contribute individually to a new paradigm of gardening in the face of climate change.