Ten Things Every Gardener Should Know

[Guest guest]

Ten Things Every Gardener Should Know

by Carol Wallace-

http://www.gardenguides.com/articles/tenthings.htm

I used to wonder how it was that two people of like intelligence

could open a cookbook and follow the same recipe and produce two

entirely different results - one heavenly, and one quite leaden. I

began to understand it though, when I began to garden. I used the

same book others who had beautiful gardens had used - I read it

carefully, took notes, drew up plans, shopped carefully and

practically used a grid to plant things as they should be planted.

 

But my garden didn't look anything like anyone else's.

 

Two people, or a thousand people can follow the same basic " recipe "

for a good garden - and yet no two gardens will ever come out the

same. Some will be quite successful; many will be good first efforts,

which will be refined over time - and a few would be utter failures.

 

So perhaps it is right to warn the new gardeners - or those who have

dabbled but are starting to get serious, about the mystique in

gardening that few ever really warn us about.

 

1. Even if you do everything right, things will go wrong.

It's true. Should you be of the compulsive type who has explored

every nuance of gardening, had the soil tested and researched each

and every plant you install, you will still not get perfection. A

vole will race through his little tunnel, stopping periodically to

munch away the roots of your prize delphinium. A hailstorm will punch

holes in both leaves and flowers - and what they don't get the slugs

will. You may have drought - of floods. Or you may have purchased a

mislabeled plant, so that while the one you meant to buy would have

loved your garden, you ended up with a finicky relation that doesn't

like its new home.

 

These failures are not always your fault. They are tests to see if

you really have the kind of character to garden and enjoy it. If you

like challenges, you will rise to them.

 

 

2. Most of us will NOT do everything right.

It's not for lack of trying. One thing every passionate gardener soon

learns is that the more you know, the more you find that you still

don't know. There are some things about gardening that even the most

expert of experts can't explain. So why should we mere mortals be

able to?

 

Every year you will learn from your mistakes - and every year you

will do more and more things that are right. Not everything - but

more than in each preceding year.

 

3.Even the most rank beginner can have undreamed of success with

plants that others fail with.

That's part of what keeps us going. I know I've always had splendid

success with Heuchera. The owner of the local nursery, who taught me

a great deal of what I know about gardening, says he simply can't

grow them. It just so happens that for many reasons peculiar to the

history of my property I have quite a different soil than he does. So

it isn't my skill, nor is it a lack of skill on his part. It's not

even experience. It's the happenstance of our soil.

 

Part of a gardener's success might be a green thumb - but much of it

is in the soil.

 

4.Much of your success really IS in the soil.

Many years ago, before I had a real place of my own to garden, my

landlord let me plant a small garden in front of the house I was

renting. I didn't read any gardening books because it all seemed so

obvious. Get rid of that grass and plant your seeds in the dirt

underneath. And that, of course, was why I failed.

 

It really was DIRT underneath the grass - subsoil, nearly devoid of

nutrition. It wasn't soil of any kind, and it was so compacted that

it would have taken a very determined plant to actually spread roots

and prosper there. (Actually, a few did. Not many.)

 

The next time I tried a garden we tilled the soil to make sure it was

loose and friable. We added organic matter. And things grew. A lot of

those things were weeds - but we also got flowers and vegetables.

Nice ones.

 

Gardening is not wafting through the flowerbeds in floaty dresses

clipping perfect rosebuds to add to our dainty baskets. It has a real

connection to the earth - and the more we respect that earth and feed

it, the more it will give back to us.

 

THEN we can float through the yard with our secaturs and have

something worth clipping.

 

If you don't like getting your hands dirty - get out of the garden.

Except as an admirer. Gardening means getting your hands into the

dirt - and loving it.

 

5.It can be very hard telling the good guys from the bad guys.

I have many horror stories from my early years. The year I carefully

fed and nurtured what I thought where newly germinated flower seeds,

only to discover that it was all crabgrass. The year I carefully and

painstakingly pulled up about a thousand little weeds - which turned

out to be the poppies I had planted so hopefully the previous fall.

Every year you learn to recognize a few more. Every year, it seems

like something new and mysterious presents itself and you have to

decide whether to pull it or let it go. Sometimes you will make the

right decision. This usually happens more and more often as years go

by.

 

Time and experience are the best teachers. Better than any book;

better even than advice from friends. Every garden is different.

 

6. The garden in your mind will never be the one that grows in your

yard.

All of us, I'm sure, have a general picture of what we want our

garden to be like. We may not be able to plot that picture, plant by

plant, but we usually have an idea that can be filled in by shapes,

color and texture of what we call " garden. "

 

You can make a great stab at it even in a very new garden - but

unless you are very rich and can place nothing but mature plants in

the yard, you will have spaces, uneven growth rates, and some plants

that simply up and die. Some plants have exactly the look that you

want but don't appreciate the accommodations you give them. Others

like their new home too well and try to drive everything else out.

 

The inhabitants of the garden are much like the members of the human

race! Only somewhat predictable. Always fascinating.

 

7.The garden will never be finished.

A garden is a process, rather than an end product. To a real gardener

that is its joy. It is never done; it is always changing, it will

continue to need us - and we can continue striving to create that

garden in our minds.

 

And if the preceding 6 points are true, we will not want it to be

finished. We will want to keep learning, trying to vanquish our foes

and rejoice in our triumphs, as well as to keep changing things as

our tastes change and our experiences introduce us to a multitude of

different plants.

 

We succeed wonderfully with some, fail with others and have

indifferent results with the rest. And that in itself teaches us much

about how we must garden.

 

As we learn more, our tastes adjust.

 

8.As we age, our tastes change even more, as we learn to love that

which our strengths and weaknesses can deal with.

As young gardeners we may have the energy to try a hundred different

new plants - and the mental faculty to keep the differing needs of

each separate in our heads. We may find that variety is the essence

of our youthful gardens. We may even scorn the usual and mundane.

 

As older gardeners we will come to recognize the value of the

mundane, and be charmed less by the beautiful newcomer. We will begin

to expect more of our gardens, to ask them to get by with less

attention than we used to be able to give. We may find that we must

demand that our gardens ask of us no more than we have to give.

Plants that cannot comply will have to leave.

 

The garden in our minds will change to something less demanding, but

even more satisfying.

 

9.The garden in your mind is always changing; our goals as gardeners

are also always changing.

Like our gardens, we are always growing. There is strength in the

earth, strength to be gained from failure, and joy and even more

strength with each success. And every year we will see our share of

both success and failure, and learn from both.

 

The best we can strive for is to make our gardens, and our lives, an

experience of turning failure into triumph.

 

10. The garden is one of the few things I know of that is never meant

to be perfect. Just like humankind.

Like us, the garden is a process of striving toward perfection and

learning to deal with setbacks. Every year we start out vowing to try

to get it right. Sometimes we come close.

 

I have these fears that if I ever DO get it right, there will be no

reason to garden anymore. If I can look at a garden and say, " It's

done " - then I must also fear that I have ceased to have hopes;

ceased to try to improve things. I must fear that I am also done.

 

Be grateful that your garden will always provide you with an outlet

for creativity and caring.

 

Fortunately, my garden is far from perfect yet. Close to perfection

than I am - but we both still have a long journey to take together. I

wish you the same good fortune.