To the untrained eye, the snow and ice of recent days are obstacles to driving and walking. But those with an affection for plants know the wintery mix helps protect roots and stems of perennials, shrubs and trees until the warmer temperatures of spring.
Newark resident Mary Ossa has completed some 80 hours of training through the Ohio State Extension Service's master gardener program. And while the ground might be frozen outside, she is busy inside her house.
"In the next week, I'll be taking geraniums that I have stored in my basement upside down in a box - just bare-rooted," says Ossa. "I'll be trimming them and planting them so they get a head start for the gardening season."
She says the geraniums she stores through the winter are larger and healthier than ones she might buy in a nursery. And recycling the plants cuts down on the cost of gardening.
Ossa also takes classes and volunteers at Dawes Arboretum, home to 1,700 acres of plant collections & gardens. Display Gardens Manager Ann Marie Creamer has been poring over dozens of catalogs from various seed companies.
"I love seed catalogs," says Creamer with enthusiasm. "This is when I curl up with my hot mug of tea and do a lot of reading and dreaming."
Creamer says green house space and other resources are limited at Dawes, so planning for the new season is not just a matter of filling out order forms for new types of plants. Creamer also reviews what she considers the key to successful gardening -her garden journal.
"If you use notes as you're going through the season," says Creamer, "when you're going through the seed catalogs the next season, it makes it much easier to remember where your problem spots were. What did the deer like best last year? What did the bugs like best? Where were there holes in your perennial border or something you really love from the vegetable garden. It gets hard to remember that by January and February."
George Ball is a gardener in Pennsylvania whose family once had its own seed company. Today, he is president of W. Atlee Burpee & Co, publishers of The Cook's Garden, Heronswood Nursery and Burpee catalogs. It's the busy season for his and other companies' seed listings. He notes the most popular edible crops today are tomatoes and strawberries, followed closely by the hot pepper and then potatoes and beans and peas and corn.
While seed companies see changes in gardeners' preferences, Ann Marie Creamer of Dawes considers gardening itself to be something of a work in progress.
"Even if you had unlimited resources, and you could dump all the money in the world into your garden, you'd want to change it the next year anyway," laughs Creamer. "You sort of grow along with your garden, and each season as you do that, you learn so much."