"Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.”
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May
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Fall's dramatic changes prefigure the garden's next iteration
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In many places in the Northern Hemisphere, November is an
inhospitable month that signals the beginning of winter’s icy grip. Here in temperate coastal Victoria, November marks the end of one garden year and
the beginning of another, forcing complex transitions on both garden and
gardener. The mood itself can be a little sombre, as November is often the debut of our wet
winter, typically bringing stretches of showery overcast skies punctuated by periodic downpours. By
week three back in 2009, it had already dropped more than twice the average November rainfall,
and still it came down! The run of rainy-grey days can feel psychologically confining,
signalling the season of ‘affective disorder’ in which mood serves as a drag on initiative. Driven by shortening days and less intense light, gloom
eats further into the meagre quantity of fading daylight hours. Feelings of
hopelessness can take root if this weather continues without breaks. Some lucky ones take this as a cue to decamp for sunnier climes. In the event that no
such reprieve is possible, consolations simply must be actively sought out.
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Monochrome light, typical of our November, has its own unique beauty
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A fire burning gamely in the grate is far and away
the best counter to any signs of cabin fever, but there are also a few consoling aspects
to the rains themselves. One is the welcome sound they make at night: a soft drumming
on the roof, metal downspouts gurgling audibly with runoff. Such sounds cause
sleep to come more readily, driving it deeper and making it last longer for those
fortunate enough to be sheltered in dry houses. Cloudy skies also darken the night hours, holding our circadian rhythms at bay better and for longer. After the short nights and early starts of
summer, whose habitual sleep deprivation carries on into early fall, sleep is now more sustained and
restorative. In longer stretches of wet weather the urge to hibernate and slow the pace
of life also affords a certain pleasure – if we allow ourselves to give in to it! And
while November can be really wet, even its dampest iterations offer some sunny breaks. And at such moments, when the sun suddenly appears and moss on the oaks glows in response, one is immediately reminded that
seasonal chores await attention, and also finds that the energy for tackling them often returns. Sunlight has that sort of effect on gardeners.
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Subtle November light draws out pastel tints in cool, moist landscape
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Even the wettest of Novembers hosts some sunny stretches
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Rainfall from November through February delivers the bulk of Victoria’s
annual water supply, stored in the Sooke Lake reservoir as run-off from the surrounding
hills. However, feeling put upon by grey skies and the amount of rain still to come, gardeners are not unduly concerned about water storage at this point in the year. We’ll be more grateful
when suddenly we need the water for plants wilting from drought, as happens rapidly
once our climate swings over to dryness. For the moist coastal paradise we inhabit for part of the year rests
on an ongoing climate paradox: the illusion of persistent verdure in winter is cast rudely aside when spring turns dry and green surroundings fade suddenly to buff. Drought takes hold quickly,
sometimes as early as late March, then stretches far into autumn before rain falls again and the land greens up once more. Landscape veers from lush spring plain to baked summer prairie in what
seems a mere blink. Grasses retreat deep into their roots and only reappear once fall rains entice them back, often far into October (or nowadays even later).
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Dry landscape palette: wheatstraw and caramel backed by arborial greens
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A wet-dry climate triggers abrupt
changes in the landscape, requiring gardeners to be adaptable. Fall rains typically intensify throughout November and continue on into
December, often our wettest month. Experientially though, November
often feels wetter than December, as it tends to be less punctuated by
stretches of open sky (2013 turned out to be an anomaly, a November that was more like a
December). Grey, dreary November weather can send even seasoned residents
packing, in search of sunnier days nearer the equator to offset the blahs induced by
contracting daylight hours. Yet despite November's overall greyness, the return of
greenery to lawns along with the lush mosses and striking lichen that suddenly adorn the oaks are stunning whenever the sun appears. The realm of plants glistening moistly in brilliant sunlight forms a captivating spectacle.
And we do get some sunny breaks even in November, due to our fortunate
location on the periphery of the Olympic rain shadow. Coupled
with a marine climate that moderates winter's effects and keeps us free of snow most years, we see many more such sunny stretches here than either Vancouver or Seattle.
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Sunny November breaks dramatize the mustardy dust lichen on mortared seams
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Come wet, grey November our climate more
resembles that of England, easily misleading us into thinking the English garden is an appropriate design inspiration. This is a powerful illusion, one that's comforting
psychologically, but an ecological misfit over the long dry
season yet to
come. Not surprisingly, many gardeners do strive to model local gardens on rhododendrons,
azaleas, hydrangeas, hostas and other plants needing year-round
moisture in order to really thrive. But this choice is often to the detriment of plants (and the dismay
of
garden admirers) come June, when green has exited the landscape with jarring finality
and moisture-loving foliage
flags and yellows.
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Winter colour from hips clustered on ruddy stems of native Nootka Rose
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But not so the native, drought-adapted trees like oaks, firs,
big-leaf maples and the exotic arbutus, nor their natural understory of
snowberry, Oregon grape, Indian plum, Nootka Rose and ocean spray, forming
pleasing thickets wherever we allow them space. Some gardeners do succeed in
making facsimiles of English garden borders work tolerably well hereabouts, abetted by sufficient
moisture and mulch to keep their preferred plants from burning out. But this is a running
challenge that takes tremendous investments of time and resources to meet (one that is getting worse by the year in the era of climate change). If I’ve learned anything
from decades of gardening in Victoria, it’s to fight neither site nor climate by preferring exotic
plants. I will always hanker after hydrangeas, but in this climate and on our
site, the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze.
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Cotoneaster berries add warmth to autumn colours
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Still, for five-to-seven months a year, depending upon seasonal
variations, we do seem to be kith-and-kin of moist-England and so its
traditional landscape park can seem a fitting Ur-garden. This illusion
intensifies during our long, moist coastal spring, which thanks to warm marine air comes
early, develops exquisitely slowly, and in many years enables us to enjoy clear
separation of the early, middle, and late varieties of many types of plants
(among my favorites: quince, iris, lilac and peony, along with simple versions of all
the spring bulbs). This slow-release spring affords exceptional flowering complexity
across our entire regional plant palette. Places that jump right into full-on spring from
the throes of frigid winter, like my native Ontario, never witness our slowly unfolding
panorama of spring blooms.
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Daffodils flower early, so are subject to weather reversals, but revive quickly
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Daffodils, bergenia and quince provide early flowering incidents
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And how England-like it is when the bulb
clans launch their succession
of cameo appearances, starting with aconites, snowdrops and crocuses, then inching into daffodils
and jonquils, before heading
over-the-top in the full colour-riot of tulips. Until the end of April in some years, and
occasionally even as late as early-to-mid June, we inhabit oak parklands carpeted in
meadow
flowers like camas that can be edged with magnificent shrubbery borders. And then ‘poof’, the grasses begin to
die back,
buff and caramel tones appear, and suddenly we’re as bone-dry as southern California. This
plunge,
cold-turkey, into near-desert conditions is not for the faint of heart - it can only be countered by designs that rely more on drought-tolerant
plantings coupled with drip-irrigation systems. There can be as many as six or seven - and certainly not less than
three-and-a-half - months of these parched conditions, during which many plants need
regular watering just to survive. On sites with thin, spare soils like ours,
stunting is a possibility that stalks the garden. In such conditions it
pays to minimize the
number of plants needing their hands held from day-to-day. Finally, after the
long months
of dessication and frantic watering, fresh rains effect a gradual return to
greenery,
culminating in these very November downpours just now weighing so
heavily on my
mood.
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Dry landscape: beautiful, but not for gardening
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November – hardly the most promising month for getting
outside – also sees the bulk of our annual leaf-fall on the west coast. By end
of week one in 2010, the Garry Oaks had already shed two-thirds of their leaves.
By the end of week three, after major wind storms, they were all pretty much
down. Individual specimens
of sweet gum, big-leaf maple, and trembling aspen may hold their colourful displays a while longer, but by the last week of November, most leaves are down and carpeting
lawns and beds, or piling up in wind-driven drifts in corners and crevices. The year 2013 saw a bumper crop of deciduous leaves, courtesy of a long moist spring – a boon in the garden as leaves are the principal ingredient of fall
compost, which is easily made ready in time for dressing spring beds. But these same
leaves can seem a bane when weather and lack of inclination interfere with clearing them from the scene. And every five to seven years, in what's called a mast year, the oaks drop an unusually heavy crop of acorns, necessitating separate collection and complicating the job of assembling leaves for composting (especially if the compost is a cool one, as acorns germinate readily in cool heaps).
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After many November rainstorms, nearly all the oak leaves are down
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When I moved back to Victoria 35 years ago, the accepted wisdom here was
that there was no alternative but to burn the oak leaves. Accordingly, most back yards came equipped with a metal burn barrel. Fall typically gave
rise to prolonged periods of largely ineffectual burning – ‘smouldering’ may be more exact - reaching a crescendo in November and December. Back then, people
spent days on end stuffing paltry quantities of leaves into barrel burners, only
to release copious clouds of dense blue-grey smoke. It was widely believed that oak leaves were hard to decompose (they aren't), so burning was held to be the only effective way to dispose of them - a truth belied by the slow, choking results but clung-to firmly nonetheless. Wet leaves simply
don’t burn well, full stop. In those days, many November weekends were ruined by
ambient air too smoky to work outside in. Paradoxically, and perversely, the
few sunny breaks in an often-gloomy month were eclipsed by plumes of thick smoke. Today such
fires are wisely banned in suburban Saanich, there’s greater knowledge of how to effectively compost oak leaves (they break down in three months if properly handled) and our
enlightened municipality now offers free curbside collection of piled leaves to
anyone disinclined to work them on site. I myself rarely have spare leaves for pick up, but the program is a godsend for many residents. To
me it’s more satisfying to return them as finished compost to waiting beds in
early spring, and remarkably easy once you acquire the knack.
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Saanich crew using a vacuum hose to collect leaves raked to the curb
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Recently, on a November day with weather fronts scrimmaging determinedly back
and forth above, I felt frustrated by the gloomy persistence of showery
overcast. Then just near the point of despair, the clouds parted, the sun appeared, and the
idea of raking leaves moved from abstract burden to immediate boon. Working outside, exposed
to benign weather, on a productive task at a congenial pace, to me offers consummate enjoyment of gardening. Of course, nothing compares with an
outcome that advances the overall composition, but workaday gardeners tend to see
their creations more while carrying out specific tasks than as the leisured observers of completed wholes appealed to by coffee-table garden books.
No matter, because we finally get to be out in it, making it, refining it, enjoying the
creative act of tweaking the garden's next iteration.
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Raking is a prelude to more-thorough tidying that emphasizes structure
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Form gradually re-emerges, the garden's bones appearing in sharper relief
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By this point in the garden year the ground is often too sodden for
many activities, the soil simply too damp to be worked. Bulb
planting and division for next
spring’s early show have ideally been done long before it gets this wet. I
say
‘ideally’ because I rarely get to these activities in a timely manner, so often find myself waiting for clear stretches that drain soils enough to allow planting (which
hardly optimizes results). Raking leaves on wet lawns is far more
feasible as an activity, so
long as one has water-proof boots ready to hand. Duck boots with warm
felt
inserts are highly prized by local gardeners, as they enable winter work.
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Mosses that recede to rinds in summer bulk up suddenly in wetter weather
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The return of the rains and the lessening of sun intensities revives another plant realm that should be
made welcome in our gardens (if not so much on our roofs and in our lawns): a complex
ecology of mosses, lichen and kindred plants that adds texture and subtle coloration
to rock outcrops and tree limbs. Contracted to mere rind by the long summer
drought, moss is in fact a sponge that bulks up quickly with rainfall and adds a unique
aerial dimension to the returning greenery.
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A complex ecology of unique life-forms
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Moss serves as green backdrop
for the emergence of many mushrooms and lichen, coating tree trunks and limbs in
its glowing aura whenever sun follows rain. Powder or dust lichen appear as spattered flecks
on oak trunks and spread themselves extensively on rock outcrops and stone walls, preferring spots that offer sun and damp in vertical planes.
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Tufts of moss flecked with lipstick lichen tubes
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These
subtle plants add depth and dimension to the return of fall colours: aquas,
greeny-blues,
mustard yellows, burnt orange and off-whites among them. They comprise a mysterious
world
involving complex and poorly understood dependencies with algaes
and
molds, one I don't comprehend but whose presence adds extensive elegance to the winter garden. If we offer
them suitable habitat, such as
exposed rocks and Garry oaks, they will gradually occupy it as naturally as they do our wilder
spaces.
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Colonies of mosses and crepe-like lichen adorn moist rocks
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Spreading mass of lichen appears to incorporate multiple organisms
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I’ve been known to select a rock with an embryonic lichen
colony on it to impart a sense of belonging and long-habitation to a new
garden wall. There are many such lichen to choose from, with over 1300 species identified in here in B.C.,
classed into orders by their form: dust, crust, scale, leaf, club, shrub and
hair. Lichen proliferate widely in wilderness areas but have difficulty
surviving full-on urban conditions. Suburban gardens hosting rocky outcrops and native
species comprise more amenable milieu. Because these plants contribute
subtly to overall effects, they don’t jump out with showy display but rather require discerning attention in order to appear to the eye. For me, noticing fungi,
lichen and mosses is an active part of the return of looking in fall –
part of being able to see the garden anew and so imagine fresh possibilities. Because these organisms emerge just as our deciduous
trees lose their annual growth and head into winter dormancy, they
embody a sense of fresh possibility and signal that nature's annual cycle is
starting once again.
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A strange world of life-forms that are extensive yet not erect or showy
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Tidying and ordering the garden scene – however fleeting the
effect in stormy November when ensuing weather buffets and rearranges things regularly – nonetheless brings fresh clarity to our arrangements. One begins to see the
garden more clearly, as if it were somehow newly inspirited, and from here it's easier to visualize how it might be reorganized to appear come spring. For it is against this clarifying background
that spring’s changes pencil themselves gradually into the landscape. The garden’s bones – its paths, walls, steps
and the plants used architecturally to shape spaces and provide form in winter – come into sharper relief
with the operations of tidying and pruning, the entire undertaking unified by the returning greenery. Garden objects
made to recede by blankets of leaves and fall litter suddenly rise to the eye
as context is restored. Feelings of repose and fitness slowly return.
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Raking and pruning re-establish and clarify the garden's structure
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Pruning is another activity awaiting periodic breaks in the rain, a time when secateurs, loppers, hand saws and ladders make their appearance. Some
of summer’s luxuriance usually still needs paring back – shrubs like santolina, rosemary, spirea and others benefit from pruning to shape, gaining in
longevity and svelteness whatever is lost in bulk. Boxwood also responds positively to a tightening
of its now more-blowsy form, while spent blooms need removing and perennials should be cut back to
the soil. All of the berrying plants, here especially the many types of cotoneaster and pyracantha adorning the site, benefit from pruning after the birds have stripped them clean. All this clipping and pruning helps solidify the garden's underlying structure,
which is buried from early spring on by waves of quickening growth and floral exuberance. Once greater simplicity reigns, the eyes are readied to appreciate colour again against a wash of differentiated greens.
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Maple leaves strewn here and there by November storms
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Raking leaves stands as one of my favourite ways of
working in the fall garden. With deciduous trees it really cannot be avoided
anyway, so we may as well learn to enjoy it. Raking lends itself to rhythmic
movement, the rake's tines sending swaths of leaves fluidly into lines and
piles. A good metal rake is indispensable if one is actually going to get lost in the
exercise. I often see people struggling awkwardly with the rigid
plastic rakes so common nowadays. No wonder they’d rather avoid the activity - fighting the tool you're using is never fun! Rigid plastic isn’t springy enough for the task at hand,
transforming it into something more to be endured than enjoyed. If you have a plastic rake,
ditch it right now and go find yourself a classic metal-headed, wood-handled
rake (one with springs attached to a spreader bar, so the rake has some dynamism when you send
the leaves towards your growing pile). Choose a width that fits the spaces you’ll be
working in; too wide and you won’t find it convenient to use. A small
hand rake is also useful for clearing beds and crevices, and for loading leaves into bins for transport once they've been raked up. You’ll be amazed what
a difference quality makes - how much more control over the action you develop,
how much more gets done in a given amount of time. With developing skills, your metal rake
will soon be your passport to a workspace known as
‘flow’. Flow indicates a state of mind where skills, purpose and ambient
conditions all thrive together, allowing outcomes to be achieved while enjoyment is taken. This space is susceptible to cultivation, just
like the garden itself. In time you’ll find yourself immersed in the
activity, body and rake working as one, dancing the leaves along into lines and heaps.
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Leaves provide us with the raw material for compost-making
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The ultimate reward of raking is the stock of raw material accumulated
for fresh compost making. In periods of clear weather, I moisten the
caramel-coloured oak leaves with a hose, coat them lightly with dampened soil and
blend in any suitable clippings from our fall tidying of beds and shrubberies. The moistened soil scuffs the leaves, opening their surface to invasion by the micro-organisms that ultimately break them down.
This labour of compost-making is among the most satisfying and enjoyable known to gardeners – easy to accomplish, yet not for rushing through. In November, it’s a matter of
aligning free time with breaks in the weather so compost can comfortably
be worked up. If it doesn't get done in November, there's always December. Taking it slowly and methodically, establishing a rhythm involving
sequential acts of watering, mixing and piling, is the ideal way to make a compost heap.
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Garden shed, afternoon light, emerging compost heap by fence
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Composting uses natural agents to break down organic
matter like leaves. Because we don't have enough nitrogen-rich material to create a hot
compost in fall (the best way of killing weed seeds and breaking down coarse material) I build one that works with the cooler forces of decomposition.
I endeavour to keep seeds out of it entirely (a moving target that) and not to inadvertently introduce
plant roots that could re-establish themselves in a cool heap (for example, chunks of snowberry root). My goal is to furnish
a tempting hotel for worms and the many micro-organisms that will, over the ensuing
months, consume every scrap of green kitchen and garden waste we can mix
into the leaves. Forget about buying compost starters, as they’re unnecessary. It’s a
matter of getting a workable ratio of green (nitrogenous) and brown (carboniferous) materials, then combining the mix with garden soil and sufficient moisture to get the heap going. You bias your pile via its composition towards either being hot or cool; this is a choice based on the feedstock you have on hand, one with implications for what consumes the edibles on offer.
Available nitrogen is decisive; if you have little, you are perforce running a cold heap. Once made up, your pile largely takes care of itself with periodic forking over. You can
make quite workable compost heaps with only soil and carboniferous materials,
with the green element added as kitchen scraps and garden clippings become available.
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Mossy oaks tinged with frost, bathed in sun
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We rely on our compost heap to recycle
everything from the kitchen that’s
not fat, meat, or a dessert leftover. Worms absolutely love coffee grounds, by the way, and will go out of their way to birth their young on them. The only trick in compost making is to establish the pile
with a
good balance of materials and sufficient moisture to make a virtuous cycle. Then
it’s
ready to take as much green material as you care to throw into it, with
only occasional
forking-over for aeration and to keep the materials mixed. I feel that whether you do or don’t create a formal bin to
contain the compost is a site- and person-specific choice. You can keep it as
simple as building a pile directly on the ground, which is the method we use (this gives worms direct access to it).
You may need to cover it with something in order to protect the nutrients against
being flushed by rain, but be careful that your cover doesn't tempt rodents to set up shop
in the heap (I tried this once, and that's exactly what happened)! When it comes
time to fork it over (a natural accelerant) a heap on the ground
is far and away the most
convenient structure to deal with. Box and drum structures make it more
awkward to mix and aerate, especially if you are dealing with any quantity of leaves. A pile that's accessible from all sides is
most
efficient, and can easily be remixed simply by forking it along a couple of
feet.
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Fissured oak bark and lichen on rock add feelings of age to the garden
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I spend more time on raking and tidying in November than I do using this material to make up compost heaps. Raking along, I often find myself contemplating the
challenges and opportunities of the winter months, which mostly lie ahead. Hardest of all is adapting to shortening days (winter solstice isn't until December 21st) along with the greater incidence of grey, wet conditions. And yet, to say ‘grey’ is
to sentence November to a kind of dreary monotony that belies the beauty revealed at certain points. Grey light can indeed be cheerless and cold,
but it can also convey monochrome subtleties to a discerning eye. It’s visually refreshing after summer’s busy colour competition to see nature through a more
chaste lens. Then rather unexpectedly sunshine reappears, and the monochrome setting gives way to greenery set off by glistening fall berries, glowing mosses, and saturated
barks.
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Monochrome November light and clouds
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Red and yellow pyracantha berries glow in warmer November light
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Cotoneaster and pyracantha both produce scads of berries in these parts, colouring up as fall cools into early winter. But many other plants also berry or form hips, from roses and ornamental crabs to
hawthorns, holly and some viburnums. The berry crop, though restrained when compared to the luxuriance of summer flowers,
nonetheless echoes its theme of abundance. Deep reds, oranges, and yellows predominate,
but delightful cranberry, coral and burgundy tones also show against the glistening
greens.
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Cotoneaster franchetii's salmony-red berries glow in November light
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The season of moist weather comprises a subtle, somewhat melancholic, and strangely
beautiful time on the west coast, a period that can prompt reflection on life’s glories and mysteries, its short duration, its potential for renewal. Autumn gives way gradually to winter's shorter days, while the period over Christmas often seems to bring snowy weather. But by mid-January, the rains return, temperatures resume their gradual rise, and nature is again in dynamic balance awaiting immanent change. Returning robins devour the last of the berry crop in late January and early February, stripping shrubs of these temporary tokens of the cycle of growth and decay. In the garden, life readies itself to surge anew as climate moderates and the ground remains moist. Conscious of all these factors, gardeners are reminded of the possibility of
planning
garden events to occur across four distinct seasons.
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November light isn't only monochrome, but also sometimes glowing and burnished
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Subtle colour harmony among rocks, leaves and berries after a recent rain
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Moisture's return ultimately restores a balance and simplicity that’s entirely satisfying to contemplate. After relentless chasing of new growth
in spring's quickening progression, and the ensuing retreat from summer's heat, fall offers a welcome
restoration of repose in the garden. Repose can be described as a
placid, serene, and peaceful feeling that's highly esteemed by gardeners. It’s
the opposite of things that are loud, showy, bright, metallic, and harsh. Feelings of
repose are amplified most when garden choices feel as if they belong where placed,
a condition where harmony of relationship exists among all elements of the composition. In November and December, with such feelings of repose on the rise, it is possible to think again about garden design, to reflect on the
experiences of the past year, and to tentatively draw new conclusions: what themes to
emphasize more strongly, which plants to replace, what structures to create and effects to amplify next
year.
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One moist-garden activity is taking cuttings for rooting, here curry plant
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The rub is simply that
many of the changes one might like to effect can’t be made until soils drain
sufficiently for easy working. Yet fall’s slackening rhythm does predispose the
mind to muse about garden possibilities, an integral part of
creative engagement in designing and maintaining one. Finally there’s no longer any rush
to complete a backlog of outdoor tasks. How fine it is, if infrequent in harried
lives, to curl up on a couch with a blazing fire and allow a garden text to loft the
mind into imagining what could be come next year. Briefly the would-be creative-gardener
trumps the slave to routine garden tasks, and suddenly the possibilities can be imagined anew. Some
part of gardening involves dreaming about what might be; fall turning
wintry sees the return of the desire to conjure more definite ideas of the garden's trajectory, to aspire to shape one’s own garden in novel ways.
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Even monochrome November light has its beauty
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Fall thus portends the return of reading as further stimulus
to imagining next year’s garden. I find such reading nearly impossible in summer's heat – particularly as garden labour reduces
itself to the obsessive watering of living specimens, dead-heading of plants, and the removal of
spent materials. Come moist-fall the survival imperative reigning over
the garden in summer's drought can be forgotten, a most welcome evolution. Come moist-fall, green spreads
its tentacles through the landscape once again. And with refreshed greenery comes new imagining,
conditioned by the current year’s experience and leavened by the exotica captured in books. I’ve been enjoying browsing several new garden books this
fall, but perhaps I’ll leave that side of it for later. Meantime, I’m waiting for another weather opening in order to pick the oak leaves out of my fish-bone cotoneasters, so they don't become
habitat for webworms next spring! And after that, the compost heap awaits further attention.
Sure hope it doesn’t rain!
2023 Postscript
This article was written first in 2009, then rewritten in 2013. Published originally in The Seasoned Gardener, it's now been rewritten for this site in fall 2023. In the meantime, many things have changed climate-wise in Victoria and across the province. We still have a wet/dry climate in these parts, but the drought has been extending its season, intensifying its dessicating effect on landscape here and across southern BC. This has had grim outcomes for some communities (as in Lytton, BC where after recording a record temperature of 49.6 degrees celsius, the entire town burned down on June 30, 2021). Yet despite unprecedented heat and drought, that autumn also brought downpours so intense as to be described as 'atmospheric rivers' in Southern BC, flooding Sumas Prairie and washing out bridges, dykes and whole highways. Here in the Capital Region, rainfall that October was 121% of the monthly average since 1914, while November rains were 216% of the monthly average; so much rain fell that Sooke Lake Reservoir was already full by November 28th! Yet the following year, this rain-pattern reversed and the summer drought continued far into fall: November rains were 42% of the average, December's 47%, January's 40%, February's 81%. Our reservoir eventually filled up, but only in March (four months later than the previous year). So the era of climate change sees the number of months of severe drought extending, while the intensity of periodic downpours grows in some years, but is absent in others. This year (2023) brought very dry conditions both locally and across all of BC, making for the worst and most expensive wildfire season on record and confirming again that we're facing a climate crisis of gargantuan proportions. In fact, BC experienced its four most severe wildfire seasons ever over the past seven years, in 2017, 2018, 2021 and 2023. But 2023 outdid them all - as of September 10, some 22,560 square kilometres had burned, dwarfing the prior record of 13,543 square kilometres set in 2018. You can grasp the significance of this from the fact that between 1919 and 2016, only three wildfire seasons ever saw more than 5,000 kilometres burn. The intensity of these fires is increasing as well, making them much harder to fight on the ground. We don't yet understand the full implication of this, but we can see the effects of our drying climate across the regional landscape: cedars (a tree that likes its feet wet) are dying back en masse, while boxwood (a common garden shrub that used to able to survive droughts of three or four months quite handily) are showing signs of stress in the sustained dryness. Where it all goes over time is an open question: I merely point to the obvious signs that our way of life is modifying climate dramatically, while asking whether we shouldn't be modifying our way of life to align it better with nature?
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Boxwood with southern exposure, near the Gorge, browning out
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Boxwood with open exposure, browning out
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When this article was first written in 2009, I had been gardening at Grange Road for some 21 years. To that point, the pattern of a wet/dry climate that reliably turned moist by November (at the latest) held consistent. What varied from year to year was the point at which the ground fully dried out, which changed from the second or third week of April to much later in the spring. Every so often, perhaps every four to five years, May would get ample rainfall and the ground wouldn't fully dry out until into June. There were other variables subject to annual change as well, like the amount of rain falling from June through September. It might be anywhere from a little to a fair amount. But typically, the earth would not become fully saturated again until November's rains, making this month the hinge for the swing from dryness to wetness. In the ensuing period, climate change has varied things further, extending the months of drought to five, six or even seven, while reducing the amount of rainfall delivered in the summer months and hastening the advent of dryness and the need for full-on watering. We have even seen the earth go dry as early as late March, and we've now seen dry fall extend through October and reach far into November.
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Peonies to the left, flourishing in spring conditions in the nineties
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Early in the nineties, I brought peonies (photo above) and irises from Ferncliff Gardens in the Fraser Valley to the garden on Grange Road. There was then sufficient annual moisture from rainfall to garden such exotics back then, and initially they flourished. But by the early 2000s the peonies especially were beginning to stunt from increasing drought, even with loads of hand watering. Today there are still a few sparse leaves of those original peony plantings, but they no longer flower (peonies don't respond well to thin soils, ongoing drought, and scorching sun). A few of the irises still flower, but they aren't entirely happy either. Irises that were part of the garden before my time, and which bloomed reliably for over three decades, have in the last three years mostly stopped flowering too. This is the new climate reality for our gardens, which suggests we are going to have to fundamentally change our approach to design, plantings and watering.
Drought has become severe enough that this October BC Hydro warned the public to expect more power outages due to falling trees. "Trees weakened by drought and associated disease can be more susceptible to wind...As storm season ramps up, a substantial number of dead and damaged trees and branches are expected to fall, contributing to power outages." Falling trees in adverse weather are the single biggest cause of power loss in British Columbia.
