Time in a Garden: Gardening presents for under the tree
Wintery weather arrived in the Upper Midwest ahead of Thanksgiving this year and my gardener friends already are expressing their distress on social media. All of which gives the spouses or friends of gardeners a mighty powerful gift-giving hint for the upcoming holidays.
Rather than cut floral bouquets, a great idea would be to gift living plants that will carry the frustrated gardener over until spring. Not as popular as they once were, African violets can be a fun choice. For many older gardeners especially, they will be precious reminders of parents or grandparents who kept their winter windowsills stocked with those prolific bloomers.
Succulent gardens too offer far more varieties than just the seasonal Christmas cacti or poinsettias and they will happily move out-of-doors in the warmer months. Orchids are another option, but I’ll admit they are a bit finicky to grow. Bonsai plants available even in many big box shopping outlets also can keep the gardener thinking green year-round. The website balconygardensweb.com is one of many online sources of information about the best trees to use.
“If I can’t garden, at least I can dream or read about them,” a friend once said. Books on gardening can range from technical resources like the classic "Ten Thousand Garden Questions Answered" to specialty books on perennials, succulents or cacti. Or how about books about various gardening traditions from Italian and French styles to the ever-popular English cottage garden. A modest commercial here for my own gardener’s day book — "An Itinerant Gardener’s Book of Days" — carries the reader through 365 daily entries on the gardening life.
An indoor gardening system can also be a real hit. There are many affordable countertop hydroponic gardens on the market now — a gift that keeps on giving year after year. As I write this column, we are happily harvesting fresh mixed greens from a system gifted us by one of daughters some holidays back, an ongoing treat that will carry us through the wintery months.
For gardeners who wear gloves, there is no such thing as "too many." Two of my personal favorites are a trenching spade and a sod-weasel that allows you to stand on it to cut the edging around the beds. Under my holiday tree were a wheeled tractor-seat garden stool and a canvas gardener’s bag that can be used to store weeds or tools as I make the rounds of the beds every summer.
Whether you seek out a glass suncatcher of a favorite garden plant or if you choose an old-fashioned terrarium, the gift will signal that you get it. Anything that reminds us of green things growing in the dreary winter months ahead is bound to be a hit.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Time in a Garden: Gardening presents for under the tree
