New Year’s Project: A Garden Calendar

For gardeners, the holidays are a bridge…sort of a gateway between the “non-gardening” season and the “gearing-up-for-gardening season”. From Thanksgiving to Christmas, our focus is on friends and family, good food and good times. But as soon as that fervor dies down, one thing dominates our thoughts…SEED CATALOGS. And thus begins “gearing-up-for-gardening” season.

I love this time of year. I look forward to sipping a hot toddy and perusing through the glossy pages of my catalogs, dreaming of the spring to come. But let’s face it, there’s only so many catalogs and so many hot toddy’s I can drink, before it all gets a bit too much. Since I am already inspired, I find it’s a great time to be creative.

A simple project that highlights some of the most beautiful moments in my garden is the creation of a garden calendar. If you are like me, you’ve spent almost as much time trying to capture the beauty of your garden in photographs as you have spent gardening. This leads to a huge collection of digital photos, which sadly sit on a hard drive, hidden and lonely. A calendar is a perfect use for said photos…and a fun way to re-experience gardens of the past.

All you need to do is find 12 beautiful photos of plants, borders, landscape designs or some combination thereof. Yes, I realize it might be difficult to choose only twelve, but remember; you can do this next year, too. Keep in mind that you’ll want high-resolution photos that are in focus and really capture the essence of the scene. As you are choosing photographs, look at them in the largest setting so you can get a sense of what they will look like in a large calendar.

Some plants naturally lend themselves to a calendar. Bright and luscious flowers are always a winner and the Superbells^® line of Calibrachoas is a great place to start. One of my favorites is Superbells^® Scarlet, its color is a zesty, juicy red. Or you could highlight beautifully textured foliage like that in Dolce^® Crème Brulee Heuchera  or Black Lace^™ Sambucus.

There really are endless colors and combinations from which to choose.

The next step is to head to a website that specializes in making prints. I’ve used sites like Snapfish and Shutterfly  with great success. Just choose the layout that you’d like, upload your photos and voila, you have a garden calendar!

Though this is an easy project, I thought I should end with a warning. There are calendar options that let you upload a lot more than 12 photos. This can lead to endless hours revisiting your gardening successes. Don’t blame me if you start on January 1 and look up to find it’s the beginning of February!

^© 2012 Proven Winners, LLC.