Slow Gardening using a Holding Garden

I couldn’t possibly garden without one. Okay, I’m exaggerating but that’s how essential the holding garden seems. You just can’t slow down and design your garden carefully if you’re racing to stick plants in the ground before you know where they’re going or before you’ve improved the soil for them. Holding gardens they take the pressure off the gardener, too.

Knockout roses in holding gardenWhat is It?

It’s anyplace you can stick a plant for a day or a month — or even a season — where it’ll survive while waiting to be planted more permanently. And for every plant I can think of, the best situation for its survival is in the shade. Also in the ground, preferably in a spot routinely used for this purpose, so the soil is easy-peasy to dig in.

Alternatively, a holding “garden” can be pots of the right size or any container that’ll hold the plant, plus some soil or leafmold mulch packed tightly aroPeriwinkle in plastic binund it. A plant just sitting on the ground with its rootball exposed is probably not long for this world, especially in the sun (and I’ve seen it done!)

In these photos you see:

  • Top, Knockout roses in a shady spot.
  • Right, periwinkle stuffed in one of my favorite plant containers — a cement-mixing pan. Leafmold mulch is packed around its sides.
  • Next, light green carex (an evergreen grass) planted in the shaded holding garden.
  • Last, liriope similarly packed in another cement-mixing pan. (Kitty litter pans are also excellent.)

If you don’t have a shady area that could be used as a holding or nursery garden, maybe a neighbor does. I’m trying to take away your excuses.

When To Use One

  • When you’re rearranging plants.
  • When someone gives you unpotted plants and you don’t know yet where to put them.Carex in holding garden
  • When you’ve divided plants and aren’t ready to either plant them or give them away.

How to Use One

Dig a hole big enough for the plant’s root mass and the same depth as its root mass, and place in hole. Fill dirt around the root mass, pat down, mulch around the root mass, and water thoroughly. That means deeply. And keep an eye on them, feeling the soil with your finger if necessary and watering when it’s dry. Assuming it’s in the shade, frequent watering won’t be necessary.




The Benefits of Slowing Down

  • Removing most or all the plants in an area you’re redesigning lets you see the whole in a new way, so ideas for the new design can come to you.
  • You have time to regrade. That’s right — correct all those pits in your soil, the unevenness you find unattractive or hard to walk on. Correct the grading problems that cause pooling of water or other problems with rainwater. Fill in the holes you’ve removed plants from. Make the soil surface smooth.
  • You have time for the grade to settle after a rain or two, so you can correct it again.
  • It’s clear that in our fast, stressed-out lives, slowing down is a Good Thing, as our Martha would say. Slow gardening is what real gardeners do and it’s waaay more more enjoyable than the fast gardening performed by professionals, of necessity. You know, those make-overs we see on TV? And so often, the results that come slowly and gradually look better, too.