- Overplanting
You’re going to have to referee those plants. They’re not going to do it on their own in the way you’d like. Make good choices, edit, and leave some open spaces. - Forgetting that gardens are for people as well as plants
You’re going to want to be outdoors and enjoy your garden, to sit and nap, relax and eat, because that’s what really brings the garden alive: people as well as plants. - Trying to solve every problem with plants
Because we’re gardeners and we love plants, we try to solve every problem with plants. If we need something tall, we immediately think of a statuesque plant, but sometimes a tall piece of art that stays unchanged throughout the year will be more effective than a plant.Another example is searching for drought-tolerant groundcover for a particular area when black Japanese stones would work beautifully.
- Forgetting to include hardscapes in the garden
Your plants will look very soft and beautiful set against a brick pathway or wooden building or metal sculpture that adds geometry and a hard edge to the garden. By concentrating your maintenance hours on fewer plants, you’ll enjoy your garden more. - Having too much lawn
Lawn is very maintenance-heavy, both in terms of resources and time, and it’s very hard to grow a lawn that looks good without using some chemicals.But on the other hand, I don’t want to make people feel guilty about having lawn, because sometimes they’re going to enjoy it tremendously. Kids and dogs love playing on a lawn. Behind my house, there’s a grassy alley that the neighbors share, and I open that gate and my dog goes out there and runs and runs. She just does loops up and down on that grass. She loves it! If I didn’t have that space for her to play in, I’d have to have some grass — just to give her that kind of fun.
So if you want a lawn but want to garden organically (as I do), just have less of it and be less perfectionistic about how it looks. Let it brown out in the summer if it’s dry; it’ll come back in the fall when the rains start. Don’t worry about having some weeds in the lawn. Just don’t look so closely at it. That’s an important rule of low-maintenance gardening!
I think the biggest mistake I make is wanted to do it all at once and have it look just like the picture books… We just bought our place in December and we have only lived in the area for a little over a year. You need to take time to learn your yard, what angle gets what sun, how does the rain fall, do you have a slope that gets more wet, and what kinds of things grow well in your area. All this needs to be thought out. My husband and I love to garden but we have done almost nothing so far. We are waiting and watching to learn our yard. We have a general idea what we want but need to see how the weather is going to be through the summer. We have learned that we have a ton of birds in the area, the neighbors vining jasmine bush loves to creep up our tree, and we have lots of bunnies that live around our yard… I found a great website from the state dept of agriculture and state dept of conservation that lists all the native plants and gives some suggested gardening layouts as well. Learn about the pests in your area too! Not knowing what eats or can kill your plants can cause a lot of heartache and lost work.
The above are all great suggestions (about 20 years too late for me!).
Perennials are a super idea, but you should REALLY know your garden before you invest too much money in them – they’re a bit more expensive than annuals. It’s a shame to pull out lovely plants because you put them in the wrong spot for sun or water they need and are not getting. This is a rookie mistake we have made several times and ended up giving the plants to other gardeners who had better places for them.
Trying to have a vegetable garden in a shady yard isn’t all that intellegent, but we tried it for several years before we got smart. We put in three 4X8 raised beds on the only really sunny spot in our backyard and they have been a wonderful addition and a focal point in our yard. We rotate the vegies every year and check the soil by test kit every spring, adding compost and needed minerals. The beds also have hoops at the ends (sort of like a covered wagon) so we can start a salad garden in February here in Eastern Washington State, where we only have 5 inches of rain a year and it gets to 0 degrees for at least a few days in the winter and 100+ most of August. We love the hothouse feature and we are eating salad out of the garden while most people are just putting theirs in!
We also bricked in between and in front of the beds and made sure that a wheel chair can fit between the beds, just in case. It is lovely, easy to keep clean, never gets muddy, and makes it a certainty that we can garden even if the worst happens and we become somewhat incapacitated.
We also have soaker hoses that are anchored to one of the corner post bases and snake throughout each bed. After planting or emergence we cover the dirt parts of the bed with ground cover cloth and put dirt on top of the ground cloth so it looks like a ‘real’ garden. We can soak the plants with the drip system and seldom have to pull weeds. It is especially good for tomatoes and other crops that dislike getting their folliage or fruit wet. It’s also saves water, not to mention time weeding time!
Val, I enjoyed your entry. I had the good fortune of having to start a garden from scratch a few years back, and totally agree with your suggestion regarding lawn. I used a part of the garden for a green ground cover that did not required maintenance. At the time I read all I could find about gardens, and it truly paid up in a truly efficient garden. I also stayed away from descidious trees (so I did not have to rack leaves during Fall) even though I find them quite beautiful. And I took time to lay down an irrigation system that enable me to water the whole garden thoroughly in half an hour. I had to sell the house and I must say leaving the garden behind was tough – it had started to feel like family!!!