GARDEN TIPS

If you are just beginning a new garden, hooray! You are in for a lot of fun. There are countless places on the internet to guide you, or you can go to http://www.dunnfarm.com to check out how we started our gardens. You can also go to professional garden sites, with blogs, forums, and all kinds of garden-related resources. You have many, happy times ahead of you; make it a family project; there is something for every age group to handle and the family benefits either by the vegetable harvest or the beauty your flowers will bring to the home. It will instill pride and accomplishment in your children and teach team work. Children who grow their own vegetables, eat them! All the good things! Gardening also helps nurture relationships.

Think of structural objects for your garden, like a copper gate, or a tall, cedar trellis, or a water fountain, no matter how small. How about a window, panes intact, standing in the corner of the garden, with tendrils of morning glories playing along its edges on a summer morning? Or some great rocks highlighting a plant here, supporting one there. We always bring back rocks on our day trips or vacations for our gardens...they are different, amazing pieces of where we have been. We bring them home to join the others in our gardens.

Ever try strawberries as a groundcover? Wonderful plants, green all season, strawberries in summer, reddish leaves in fall, and clumps all covered with snow in winter...terrific groundcover. Buy your summer bulbs early next year; plant in intervals so you have ongoing blooms throughout the season. Gladiolus, Iris, Oriental lilies and tiger lilies, gorgeous! For a cottage garden look, tuck these in among your perennials, matching or contrasting colors and heights. Do you have a garden journal? It is a nice thing to have, to read during the winter, and a personal journal for your family to peruse later. It's time to plant something almost any time of year!

Teach your children how to garden. There is so much they can do, it provides good exercise, builds self confidence, and is a wonderful time of sharing as you nurture new life from seeds, or help little hands pat seedlings into the ground. Plan your spring and summer gardens each year, adding something new and exciting. This year be sure to include your children. There are many happy days ahead for budding gardeners. I have such great memories of my Papa, my grandmother's, my aunt's, and my mom's gardens. They spent time with me, teaching me about roses, dragonflies, about watering, digging holes for plants, and lovingly patting them into their new homes. Flowers are the evidence of things hoped for, teaching patience, rewarding hard work.

I loved harvesting, eating our fresh tomatoes right out of the garden; they were so juicy and taste fabulous, nothing like the ones in the stores! I remember lugs of apricots and peaches mom would cut into chunks, stir in a large pot on the stove, making lovely, sweet jams; cucumbers sliced and made into pickles, and my aunt Glorya slicing fruit and vegetables, drying them in a dehydrator to store in glass jars for snacks when they went camping or hiking. Make happy memories with your kids; teach them to cook, to plant, to create, to dig in the earth, to savor something they grew themselves. Nothing can replace the pride they will have in themselves. Have fun! Happy Gardening!

Granddaughter Ella, 4 yrs old, plants a tree in her backyard in San Diego, CA.

Ella catches butterflies in the garden