Trees enhance the landscape in all seasons, including winter. The growing season officially begins after the last hard frost of spring, which in our area is some time in early to mid-May. But the start of the new year is an ideal time for homeowners to begin making plans for creating more beautiful and greener gardens.
Just like making resolutions, it's easy to dream big. But in this period of economic uncertainty, it might be a good time to focus on making one or two small changes.
Fortunately, even small changes can be significant. Here are a few with the potential to improve your quality of life this year or for many years, and offer the possibility of leaving a lasting legacy.
Planting one tree in the right place is an easy and affordable way to create beauty and improve the quality of life. Trees enhance the landscape in all seasons, including winter, because they help to create the "bones" of a landscape's design. They also can provide showy spring or summer flowers, a shady retreat from soaring heat, and exquisite fall colors or evergreen boughs.
Trees don't need to be expensive or large to be worth planting. Many organizations provide trees for free or at a reduced cost. If you prefer to buy one, smaller trees are often better investments because they typically need less time than larger trees to become established and resume growing, and often become larger in a shorter period of time. When planted strategically -- usually to the north and west -- trees of all sizes can help save money by reducing winter heating and summer cooling costs.
This year, consider planting a sapling that's right for the amount of sun and type of soil you have. No matter what it costs, it will provide invaluable benefits for you and the environment. Over its lifetime, spanning many generations, a single tree can absorb one ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, all the while producing life-sustaining oxygen.
Perennials can be budget-friendly plants. Unlike annuals that must be replanted each year, perennials are able to produce new plants each spring from their winter-hardy, underground roots.
One benefit of perennials is that each plant's clump of roots becomes larger over time, and the clump eventually needs to be dug up and divided, giving gardeners the chance to turn one plant into several plants.
If you have perennials in your garden, instead of buying new plants this year, why not focus on digging and dividing the plants you already have. Sharing or trading your extra divisions with other gardeners or neighborhood organizations or schools will help everyone to have larger and more beautiful gardens and increase plant diversity.
If you don't have perennials in your garden, why not consider investing in one. If it likes where it's growing, soon you'll have more.
A bouquet of fresh-cut flowers can make hard days seem easier, gray day seem sunnier, and is sure to put a smile on the face of anyone who sees it. But fresh flowers can be a low priority for anyone on a tight budget.
A less expensive way to enjoy fresh flowers is to grow a cutting garden from seed. For under $20 you can buy a collection of seeds for a summer's worth of flowering annuals that make excellent cut-flower bouquets
If you want to assemble your own collection, good choices are cosmos, carnations, marigolds, and zinnia. The seeds of these and other annual plants can be sown directly into garden soil, making it possible to grow beautiful bouquets less expensively and, because you grow them a home, more energy-efficiently.
From the Victory Gardens of World War II to the community supported agriculture farms of today, there have been many times when growing fruits and vegetables in shared community gardens has been an important means for weathering difficult times.
Today, there are over 50 community gardens spread throughout Chicago's parks. While many are devoted to the social, physical and emotional benefits of growing ornamental plants, there are several gardens for growing edible crops.
Information on how to start a new community garden in a neighborhood park is available from the Chicago Park District.
Denise Corkery is a horticultural writer for the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.
