It’s been a few seasons now since we’ve grown a garden for our own produce at the farm. There was a time when we grew sweet corn, butter beans, purple hull peas, lettuce, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, okra, collards, kale, strawberries, native grapes, herbs. We’d often experiment with trying new varieties or new crops altogether, sometimes adding them to the regular list of crops planted.

“Good bones,” a favorite term of garden designers, really comes home during February, that forgotten month in the garden. It refers to the visual structure that binds your plants into a pleasing design. Those "bones" serve as a backdrop during the warmer months when there are riots of colorful flowers taking center stage.