How to Spark Gardening Inspiration During Winter

Here are some tips on how I try to spark gardening inspiration during wintertime.

As the snow continues to fall here in Maine, I find I am in search of finding gardening inspiration to keep my garden dreams alive through our long winter months. Naturally, most snowy days you just want to hibernate into a cozy corner and watch the snow fall while the fireplace is ablaze in the background. During these moments I tend to dream the most of spring and summer days ahead.

The great thing about inspiration is it can spark anywhere. Personally, I tend to glean a lot of my inspiration through reading gardening books, watching YouTube videos, as well as scouring my Pinterest for some beautiful English garden inspo.

How to Find Garden Inspiration and Your Green Thumb

Finding Inspiration

There are endless ways to find inspiration all around you. Here I will list where I personally draw inspiration from, and maybe you too will find inspiration!

1. Books

Gardening books are probably my top go to when I look to spark gardening inspiration. I think especially where I am fairly early on in my gardening journey, I tend to re-read and save pages that offer a wealth of information on a topic I haven’t had much experience on yet. Below I will link a few that are currently in my own rotation.

English Gardens: From the Archives of Country Life Magazine

Cottage Gardens: A Celebration of Britain’s Most Beautiful Cottage Gardens, with Advice on Making Your Own

Bunny Williams On Garden Style

2. Videos

Another source of gardening inspiration I find is from watching YouTube videos. There is a wealth of informational videos with some fantastic channels out there. You can find essentially an instructional video on almost any gardening topic out there. A few of my favorite go to channels to help my green thumb are:

• Garden Answer
• Linda Vater
• P. Allen Smith
• Bunny Guinness
• The Impatient Gardener

3. Visiting Garden Centers, Parks and Botanical Gardens

Visiting local garden centers is also another great way to find inspiration. You have staff on hand to help answer your questions and can help provide tips and tricks to help advance your garden! I love to go to get ideas and see potentially what new native plants I could put into my landscape that I may have overlooked otherwise.

I also recommend searching for open local parks and gardens. There you will see some beautiful and creative arrangements of plants. I took lots of pictures and refer back to them now to help me plan for next year.

Even More Photos to Spark Your Garden Inspiration!

4. Pinterest

Lastly, I think another great place to start is Pinterest! There are millions of gardening and landscape design ideas and pictures out there. I found it really helpful early on to search through the pictures to try to narrow down to see what I gravitated to naturally. Personally I tend to be drawn to English cottage gardens. I find I love when a garden has both structure (this could be from boxwoods and evergreens) and also soft elements (think tall grasses etc).

So if the winter blues have you down and you feel you are in need of some inspiration, try giving one of the above a whirl! I hope it helps and you find yourself like me, just dreaming away!

-Kate

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