Magazine Articles Products & Services Store Shows My Lake Community Contests About Us Subscribe


Soil conditions: The dirt on planting a beautiful garden

By Lorraine Johnson

What nature offers the gardener in cottage country does seem daunting. Indeed, pick a problem: Pure sand. Deep shade. Pine needles galore. Rock where soil should be. Extreme wind. Perhaps a frost in June or August. Drought for weeks, then maybe a hailstorm or a tornado. But don’t give up, give in. Use these so-called deficiencies to create a garden that thrives precisely because of the sand or shade or rock or drought. Tilt your sun hat in thanks for the things that make the landscape of cottage country what it is, and start planning.

Evaluating your soil conditions

When you know your site’s quirks and characteristics – the pockets of clay soil in what is essentially a loamy bed, for example, or the corners that get scorched by late afternoon sun in an otherwise shady garden – you’ll be able to pick the plants that are as well suited to your cottage as you. The critical factors are light and soil conditions. Miriam Goldberger of Wildflower Farm, a native-plant nursery and landscaping service in Coldwater, Ont., offers a handy general guide for rating the light conditions in the area you’re hoping to plant: “If you have two to three hours of sun per day, you’re dealing with shady conditions; if you have three to four hours, it’s part sun/part shade; more than four hours, and it’s essentially a sunny site.”

As for soil condition, you need to assess composition – clay, sand, or loam – and pH – whether it’s acidic, neutral, or alkaline. A simple squeeze test will determine the first: Take a handful of moist soil and clench it in your fist. If the soil breaks apart immediately into crumbly, loose particles when you release the pressure, it’s sandy soil. On the other hand, if the soil holds together in a heavy clump, it’s clay. Another clue: When clay soil gets wet, it becomes quite sticky and, when it dries out, it becomes impermeable, dense, and “forms thick clumps that can look like rock,” says Rebecca Krawczyk, who runs Native Bark Plant Nursery, in Baysville, Ont. If you’re lucky enough to have loam – generally considered the ideal garden soil – it will hold its shape as a ball in your fist but will break apart relatively easily if you jab it. You could have all three soil types around the cottage – maybe pockets of sand or clay near the water’s edge and loam deeper into the woodsy fringes – so test a number of different areas.

While “soil pH” sounds entirely too serious for laid-back cottage gardening, it’s important to know because some plants have marked pH preferences. Blueberries, for example, need acidic soil, whereas purple coneflower and prairie smoke prefer alkaline. Soil pH is very easy to test, using an inexpensive kit available from most commercial nurseries; in general, soils on the Canadian shield tend to be acidic, while soils in limestone-based areas, such as the Bruce Peninsula or the Rideau lakes, tend to be more alkaline. But there are pockets of different conditions throughout the province – for instance, “between Bracebridge and Parry Sound,” says Rebecca Krawczyk, “the soil is quite alkaline in places.”

As well as assessing soil type, you’ll need to gauge its depth – whether or not, for example, the bedrock is just a few inches down, requiring shallow-rooted species, such as columbine and beardtongue. And you’ll have to size up the general moisture regime of the site: Does the water drain quickly, leading to dry conditions during periods of little rainfall, or is the water table close to the surface, creating moist patches in the earth? As well, take note of wind patterns at your cottage. Usually, the more sheltered the site, the larger the plant palette you can work with; gardens exposed to the blasts of prevailing winds will be limited to tougher customers.

The plants already growing on site and in nearby wild areas will provide you with all kinds of information. For instance, as Krawczyk says, “junipers tend to signal shallow soil, and conifers growing in sandy soil suggest acidic conditions. If you’ve got a well-drained site but there's a red maple growing, it suggests that that particular spot is a moist pocket.” So get yourself a good native-plants field guide, such as Peterson’s Field Guide to Wildflowers, and take cues from the natural environment.

 

Lorraine Johnson is the author of numerous books on native plant gardening, including 100 Easy-to-Grow Native Plants, and The New Ontario Naturalized Garden. Her most recent book is a collection of essays, The Natural Treasures of Carolinian Canada, which she edited. Lorraine lives in Toronto and depends on the kindness of cottage-owning friends for her summer visits to Georgian Bay and the Kawarthas.

 

April 2003 cover of Cottage LifeRepurposed from the four-part series, The Natural Garden by Lorraine Johnson in the June 2003 issue of Cottage Life magazine

Copyright © 2003, 2008 by Cottage Life. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any article, photograph, or artwork, for other than personal use, in whole or in part, without the written permission of the publisher is strictly forbidden.