The gardening season in Maine is over for most of us, so what’s a gardener to do?  Here are a few initial suggestions, with more to come.

1. Buy a plant that will do well indoors

(Or hint for someone else to do this for you!). Plants add fresh tints of green and even a bit of oxygen to your home, some offer delightful fragrances, and many provide flowers that will tide you over until spring – or the beginning of flower show season, whichever comes first this year. In addition to the traditional poinsettia, decorated boxwood tree, Christmas cactus, or cyclamen (many now available in showier new cultivars), consider a few others that do well inside a Maine home in winter:

Jasmine. Years ago a friend sent me a jasmine for Christmas, and what a treat it was: clusters of five-petalled white flowers with a sweet, but not cloying, fragrance that filled the kitchen. Winter jasmine, Jasminum polyanthum, and Arabian jasmine, Jasminum sambac, are both good species to grow indoors. Both prefer bright but indirect sunlight and cooler temperatures, specifically not above 65 degrees F. while buds are forming. For many of us thrifty Mainers who keep our thermostats set low, that range is perfect!

Citrus. If you are lucky enough to own a green house, solarium or a room with a tall ceiling and lots of sun, consider citrus trees. The smell of a key lime or orange tree is so heavenly that they entice many of us northerners to purchase mock orange shrubs to theoretically provide the same scent; alas, these make-do shrubs bloom for about a week before becoming lanky and nondescript for the rest of the year. You can smell the real thing in shrub size at Plants Unlimited.

Spring blooming bulbs. Forcing these bulbs to enjoy indoors is a great activity to do with children – they learn about the growth cycle for bulbs and anticipate the emersion of the first green tips while the whole family gets to enjoy the bright colors and fragrance of spring flowers in mid-winter. Amy Witt, a horticulturalist with the University of Maine Extension Service, has written a wonderfully detailed guide on the process: http://umaine.edu/gardening/blog/2009/11/02/forcing-bulbs/.

If you haven’t already purchased your bulbs and started them on their cooling period, take heart - paper white narcissus (Narcissus tazetta ‘Paper White’), its yellow cultivar ‘Soleil d’Or’, and cousin N. tazetta var. orientalis, the Chinese sacred lily, can all be forced without a cooling period. Or easier yet, visit your favorite local garden center – The Green Thumb and Seasons Downeast sell potted bulbs that are already sporting thick buds if not blossoming outright.

Some of the easiest bulbs to force include:

• crocuses (Crocus species) – for those of us with squirrels as neighbors, this may be our best option for growing them

• daffodils (Narcissus species) – this genus has more variety and fragrance than you might suspect

• hyacinths (Hyacinthus species) – powerful fragrance and deep colors

• tulips (Tulipa species) – a safe way to enjoy this favorite in spite of the deer browsing on your arbor vitae

• dwarf crested iris (Iris reticulata) – diminutive, but tough and colorful

• snowdrops (Galanthus species) – one of the earliest to bloom

• grape hyacinth (Muscari species) – the fragrance of this small plant will surprise you

• winter aconite (Eranthis species) – neon yellow, this buttercup relative is going to wake up even victims of seasonal affective disorder!

2. Take stock of your tools, including gardening gloves

Hoes: one tool that many gardeners want the minute that they know it exists is the stirrup hoe, also known as the oscillating hoe. Shaped like the stirrup of an English saddle, the bottom of this tool is as sharp as a guillotine and enables you to clear an entire bed of weeds without even bending over. It beheads them all at the soil surface, leaving easily raked weed corpses in its wake. Or if you’ve gotten to them before they have set seed, let them provide mulch.

Pruners: pruners are indispensable tools for any gardener, whether the cucumber stems have grown thick or your rose needs some errant stems trimmed. If you spend up front for a good pair and treat them well, you will have a tool for life; otherwise, you will purchase new pruners every other year.

Gloves: the new nitrile-coated gloves actually do what Playtex living gloves used to claim: they enable you to pick up a dime (or an Asian lily leaf beetle which you can then crush between your fingers). They come in various thicknesses and colors; having both a light weight pair for picking insects, close weeding and light pruning in addition to a heavy duty pair for shoveling, raking and dealing with prickly plants works best. Some are now made with nitrile fingers and palms, but with backs made of materials that provide air circulation to keep your hands cooler in the warm weather. I like something in a bright color (NOT green) so I can find them more easily after inevitably putting them down somewhere in the garden.

3. Books

Read them yourself or give them as gifts to the deserving gardeners among your friends and relatives. Winter is a wonderful time to increase your knowledge of wildflowers, perennials, design, new cultivars and cultivation methods that can help reduce chances of disease, increase productivity, benefit wildlife, or whatever else you’ve been curious about. What better to do on a dreary day than curl up inside with a book, safe from slugs, aphids and black spot, savoring gorgeous photos and learning more about the fascinating lives of plants. Here are a few of my favorites:

• The Garden Primer by Barbara Damrosch. Fabulous for both new and experienced gardeners, this book contains detailed descriptions of and horticultural requirements for over 300 plants, notes on useful tools, and designs for several gardens by the author who is the current president of MOFGA and co-founder of Four Season Farm, an experimental market garden which she owns with husband Eliot Coleman in Harborside, Maine.

• Native Plants for Your Maine Garden by Maureen Heffernan. While serving as executive director of the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, Ms. Heffernan wrote this book after being asked repeatedly what native plants would do well in this area. She provides photographs, insights into what plants do well where, and even several plans designed by experts.

• Understanding Perennials, A New Look at an Old Favorite by William Cullina. Actually, any book by William Cullina is likely to provide a happy reading experience. His books are filled with beautiful photographs, and he shares his extensive knowledge in interesting and totally enjoyable prose.

• The Adventurous Gardener: Where to Buy the Best Plants in New England by Ruah Donnelly. Ms. Donnelly groups some of the best nurseries, growers, hybridizers and suppliers in New England by area with contact information, directions and notes on nearby attractions and places to eat. What more could the gardener looking for a road trip want?

• Architecture in the Garden by James Van Sweden. Van Sweden and his partner Wolfgang Oehme are widely credited with developing the New American Garden Style, and the book is filled with inspiring designs and photographs.

• Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants by Douglas W. Tallamy. Dr. Tallamy writes an engaging book about the interaction of plants and wildlife. He includes both simple suggestions for how to make your garden more hospitable and even includes a detailed table evaluating trees on their ability to sustain wildlife, something for the nerd as well as the generalist.

• The Well-Tended Perennial Garden: Planting and Pruning Techniques by Tracy DiSabato-Aust. I first learned about this book in master gardener class way back when. Now recently revised, it remains the bible of the fundamental practices of perennial care, complete with illustrations and an A-Z encyclopedia of perennials.

4. Magazines

What better reward for the trudge through the snow to the mailbox than a glossy magazine filled with gorgeous photos, practical recommendations and enticing advertisements for products that could solve your gardening problems? Fine Gardening, Garden Design, and Horticulture are just a few. (Garden Design tends to focus more on the west coast, but it includes lots of trendy styles you may not find elsewhere.) Or you could splurge on a periodical from another country - Britain is a safe source since the Brits also write in English! You might try English Garden Magazine, Gardens Illustrated, and Landscape, so that you don’t even have to wait for the next issue to find more inspiration for your garden. And yes, there are even magazines that exist solely online: leafmag.com, for example, has just celebrated its first anniversary.

5. Garden journal

Take stock of how your gardens did over the past season BEFORE the seed catalogs start to arrive right after Christmas, or better yet, get a garden journal where you can record these events as they happen. In gardening just as in politics, and with thanks to Edmund Burke, "Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it." What was that tomato cultivar that bore prolifically and suffered no disease but whose fruits were completely flavorless? Which annual did the Colorado potato beetle larvae select to strip of flowers and leaves (when you thought they only dined on potatoes…)? And if your garden impatiens (Impatiens walleriana) came down with downy mildew, what can you plant in its place next year?

The organism that causes this disease, Plasmopara obducens, remains in the soil even after the affected plants are removed, so any replantings of impatiens are highly likely to be infected. It also affects its hybrids, Fusion impatiens, double impatiens, and mini-impatiens, as well as rose balsam and even our native impatiens, the jewelweed. The Cornell Extension website recommends New Guinea impatiens, begonias, or coleus as replacements because they enjoy similar light and soil conditions, but are not susceptible to downy mildew.

Write down a list of any unhappy results and outright failures you encountered and keep it at your side to maintain discipline as you peruse the alluring photos and sumptuous descriptions in the 2013 catalogs; you will be happier and your garden healthier next season.

6. Look on your own gardens with a critical eye to see how you could extend their interest through the winter now that so many plants have completed their displays for the season

Keep an eye out for gardens that look enticing even now during the brown time before snow falls. The amphitheater beside the Camden Public Library (created by 20th-Century designer Fletcher Steele), the many gardens of the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, the Asticou Azalea Garden, Thuya Garden and Lodge, and the Asticou Terraces on Mt. Desert are just a few places to visit for inspiration. And of course, there are so many gardening books and magazines with gorgeous photographs as well as written suggestions on just how to add four season interest. Earmark those photos and articles to plan what tweaks you can make in the spring.

Katherine Holland owns Blue Newt Landscape Designs, offering gardening services from design through ongoing care and coaching.