After the breathtaking display of so many different plants in May and June, it seems as if everything takes a breather in early July.
This isn't the case if you consider that a lot of the major plants supply greenery for the major part of the season and are just in bloom along with the bulbs and herbaceous perennials for a short while during the spring show like the trees and shrubs. With so much greenery around it's easy to lose sight of those many things that start their flowering in early July.
Before we consider the goal of continuous bloom throughout the season, we have to arm ourselves with a garden journal. It can be a simple three-ring binder where it's easy to keep all kinds of things together as an ongoing record of the garden display.
For our purposes today, one section could be devoted to the sequence of bloom through the year including winter.
Foliage is an important part of the garden picture, not only for winter interest, but as a foil for blooming plants and as backbone for the garden as a whole.
Once a month, take a stroll around the garden with notebook in hand and put down what is in bloom, what is going by and what has good bud set for blooming shortly. This way it will pretty well cover everything for the next three or four weeks.
These notes can be supplemented by some pictures to call to mind the larger area and how it looked.
Notes and pictures together make a good job of covering everything.
Getting started and making a habit of this little exercise will pay dividends for the small amount of time involved.
Think of it this way, on the one hand a picture can leave you puzzling about that indistinct blob in the right hand corner of the frame that reference to your notes may explain.
On the other, the picture can help call to mind the companion plants for something in full bloom at that moment when a picture was taken.
Notes and pictures together in your journal make planning for the garden so much easier than relying on uncertain memory.
None of this needs to take much time.
We are not talking pages of deathless prose nor albums full of prize-winning photography. Just get the bare bones down. You don't even need full sentences.
Surely you know your garden well enough that memory just needs a little nudge to get the creative juices flowing. Besides, it's nice to look over the journal with a cup of tea in the depths of winter when there's the leisure to study these records to see just where some shortfall really is that has been niggling at you but you can't put your finger on.
It's easy to have a spectacular garden during April, May and June with all the wonderful stuff there is -- from the earliest spring bulbs through iris, peonies and roses plus any number of flowering trees and shrubs all doing their bit in concert.
There aren't nearly as many plants that bloom together like that later, which is why so many rely on lots of annuals for the rest of the growing season.
The drawback to that is those annuals must be bought and planted every year.
Sometimes, circumstances change so the once great pleasure that was taken settling down to plant up the beds after a heady trip to the garden centre becomes more and more of a chore. Gardening shouldn't be a chore; it's meant to be a release from the everyday.
Hence the garden journal to see exactly just where some of those gaps can be filled to ease the burden while still leaving room for a few annuals and their welcome bright colour.
Now in July is the ideal time to begin this handy tool, an informal record of the flowering year, because most of the later blooming plants need to go in during the spring.
Besides looking at your own garden, take a tour of some of the public gardens to see what is in bloom just then too and make note of that.
Gardens like those of the Niagara Parks, especially the ones at its School of Horticulture, are for the pleasure and education of the general public -- not just as learning tools for their students.
Then come home and start your spring shopping list.
