December Maintenance Checklist
- Winterizing Your Irrigation System: A critical step to prevent costly damage from freezing water. Detail how to drain hoses, turn off internal shut-off valves, and cover exposed spigots.
- Protecting Tender Plants: Explain methods for insulating vulnerable plants, such as applying a fresh layer of mulch around the root crowns, covering with frost cloths before a hard freeze, or relocating potted plants to a sheltered area like a garage.
- Tool Care and Storage: Remind readers to clean, sharpen, and oil their garden tools before storing them for the winter. This ensures they are ready for the spring season.
- Leaf Management: Discuss the benefits of mulching fallen leaves with a lawnmower to enrich the soil, rather than raking and removing them. Also, advise on clearing any diseased foliage from garden beds.
- Wildlife Support: Encourage readers to clean and fill bird feeders and keep a source of unfrozen water (using a pond heater if necessary) to support local wildlife during the colder months.
Winter Design & Interest
- Incorporating Evergreens: Highlight evergreens as the “backbone” of a winter landscape, providing structure and color (green, blue, and yellow varieties) when other plants are dormant.
- Focus on Berries and Bark: Showcase plants with interesting winter features, such as the colorful bark of birch or red-twig dogwoods, and shrubs with persistent berries like holly or crabapple, which also provide food for birds.
- Creative Outdoor Lighting: Offer ideas for using string lights, spotlights, or lanterns to illuminate pathways, hardscapes, and architectural elements, enhancing safety and creating a cozy, inviting ambiance.
- Winter Container Gardens: Suggest designing container gardens using cold-tolerant plants (pansies, dwarf conifers) and natural decorative elements like pinecones and colorful twigs.
Planning and Reflection
- Garden Review and Planning: Position December as the perfect time to reflect on the past growing season. Suggest writing down what worked, what didn’t, and ideas for the next year.
- Ordering for Spring: Advise readers to browse seed catalogs and order seeds or bare-root trees and roses early to ensure the best selection for spring planting.
- Observing Your Garden’s “Bones”: Encourage a walk through the dormant landscape to assess the basic structure, identify bare spots, and note water drainage or wind patterns to inform future design decisions.
- Bringing Nature Indoors: Share tips for using clipped evergreen branches, pinecones, and berries to create festive indoor decorations like wreaths and garlands.
