Many gardeners even plan for this by storing piles of chopped up leaves in the fall for use in the spring.

Some gardeners even plan their gardens to provide year-round sensory delights.

As for the large-flowered tulip bulbs, most gardeners now plan for the expense of buying new bulbs every year or so and replanting the areas each fall.

This being the height of the buying, planting and garden visiting season, gardeners are no doubt planning a fresh look.

Of course, good gardeners plan well ahead for such calamities.

But beware: they can take up more space than the gardener has planned.

Anastasia Pardalis, director of the New York City Coalition for the Preservation of Gardens, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, said that gardeners also planned to pursue other options, like legislative action and civil disobedience.

There is, on the one hand, that big cash prize for best poem that an unemployed gardener, trapped in a hardscrabble life in rustic England, plans to win if only he can figure out how to write the darn thing.

Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix, writing in "The Random House Book of Bulbs" (1989), note that some gardeners plan their bulbs for one season's display only, in which case soil fertility is unimportant.