In the dead of winter, we conjure garden visions…

It was a cool but sunny day in April, and an older couple had agreed to meet me to accept their new plot at Thorncliffe Park Garden Club.

Even though I had given my standard note of caution to them, my heart sank a bit as I assessed the plot in advance. The small fence was bent and broken in places. Gaps had opened in the chicken wire intended to keep out critters. A chaotic collection of weeds sprouted from the soil. A few discarded Tim Horton’s cups blew about the 12×20-foot rectangular plot. Clearly, the previous gardener had made a good start the previous year but had been unable to sustain the momentum.

Assigning vacant plots in the spring was often one of the happier tasks I had as president of one of Toronto’s oldest community gardens. Each year, perhaps 10 of the 100 individual plots would come available to new gardeners on our waiting list.

I would speak to each new gardener by phone first, using a standard line — blending caution and optimism — for these occasions: “Each plot is different. Some of them need a little work. Some have some hidden treasures — like a raspberry bush that’s been left behind. Be prepared to roll up your sleeves and spend some time to get your plot in shape.”

On this spring day, I spotted the new gardener couple ambling arm in arm down our garden lane. They were ready to claim their little piece of paradise. I put on my game face and welcomed them: “Hi folks!”

Elena and Frank were long-time residents of the Thorncliffe Park neighborhood. They lived in an apartment with a small balcony but longed for a small garden to grow tomatoes, beans, leeks, onions and other nutritious vegetables. They had been on the waiting list for several years. (The story is true; their names and some details are changed).

Together we walked along a path between some neat and nicely-tilled plots to arrive at their future garden. By comparison to the plots nearby, it looked like a disaster zone.

It’d be an understatement to say that Elena and Frank were processing the sight of their new plot in very different ways. Frank’s face tightened and he inhaled sharply. “Oh no, it’s terrible,” he muttered. His wife Elena, by contrast, had tears of joy in her eyes and a smile on her face. “We can clean it up, Frank,” she gushed.

“So many weeds,” said Frank.

A glass half-full

“It’s going to be beautiful,” countered Elena, whose glass, as the saying goes, was definitely more than half full.

True to Elena’s word, the garden was tilled, the weeds discarded and the fence repaired nicely within a couple of weeks. Frank and Elena visited their plot most days, met some new friends, and brought home produce to their extended family.

Almost out of necessity, and especially with our long winters in Canada, many of my gardening friends are visionaries, just like Elena.

We gardeners dream of spring

In the dead of winter, we dream about the garden in spring. It’s a great time to conjure garden visions:

• One friend, Robert, imagined the colourful blooms of the many hundreds of tulip bulbs he had carefully planted the previous fall around the perimeter of his Thorncliffe apartment building. His tulip garden would be a gorgeous gift to his fellow residents as well as many people walking or driving through the nearby shopping mall.
• Ann, a retired teacher, puts pencil to paper in winter to map out next year’s garden — drawing changes to her mix of vegetables and flowers, or occasionally drafting a completely new garden layout. For her, it’s a time to get out the weeds and see the big picture, to take an artistic touch to garden planning.
• Like Frank, I am a bit pessimistic by nature, so I order a seed catalogue each year to kick-start my garden visioning. With January’s extreme cold weather setting in, I can peruse my colour catalogue from William Dam Seeds in Dundas, Ontario. It lets me garden vicariously through its colourful images of traditional vegetable varieties and new hybrids, berries, as well as annual and perennial flowers.
• Claus, my father-in-law, would start some seeds indoors in trays. This gave a jump on the growing season to plants such as the sweet pea pictured in the photo above. On a cold winter’s day in Toronto, the seeds sprouted. He could already imagine them winding their way up his stone chimney and along the rough wood siding of his cottage garage near Minden in summer.

Sometimes our garden visions are a single image — like the picture Elena had in her mind of a beautiful and well-ordered garden.

But the reality can be even richer. Our gardens will soon begin to grow and evolve throughout spring and summer — starting in late March, as soon as the ground can be worked.