These articles are about taking the frustrations out of gardening and moving your mind set toward a sense of achievement within your own backyard, by not reducing your garden to low maintenance but increasing or decreasing the garden to your gardening skill sets.
The articles are my opinions and I am open for discussion on them, these posts are about taking the darkness and witnessing the struggle from our hearts and moving toward the green salvation within our hands.
Enjoy
Garden Clippings - Making your garden grow
Let’s look at what may have happened to cause this green project to turn brown in the first place. Was the idea an image of the dream garden in a magazine and not within your abilities, but you said, ‘what the heck let’s give it a go anyway’?
Did you over utilize your time in other areas of your life and not give full concentration to the green project at hand? Did you just feel overwhelmed with what to do next? Maybe you did not feel supported by family members and friends to keep going because they did not understand your needs to be green!
Well if that is the case, all that is needed is a little positive self talk, dust off the knees and roll up the sleeves and get right back into the saddle of gardening again.
These disasters happen most often at the start of a young gardening career, where self doubt is prevalent, and you’re trying to lap up information while gaining experience at the same time, which is great, but you may expect some failures at this stage.
This article is not about the technical how’s and why’s of gardening but providing moral support. Here are some tips to emotional success while gardening and if anyone should know it is me a landscape designer, I have had to pick myself a number of times and get back into the saddle of gardening. This is what I have found helpful.
• Look at what your strengths are in the garden, be truthful not wishful, for example you may love pruning instead of weeding or you may love looking at the garden as if it were a picture and not actually enjoy working in it. We focus on our weakness far too often and need no help exploring them. By now you have probably rattled of three or four of them just reading this article.
• Be clear about what type of gardening you actually like and do not just follow trends, if you like to have flowers around to remind you of romance that is OK. Quite often we get stuck in the ‘Jones syndrome’ and I am sure by now the Jones are sick of everyone looking over their shoulders too.
• Educate yourself, acquire books on the type of garden that you actually want, do internet image searches, join a gardening group or develop new friendships with other gardeners in the community, because most gardeners love to share.
• Most importantly research the garden styles that make you most feel at peace, because at the end of the day, gardens are not solely about entertainment, they can be about quietness and reflection as well.
• Most importantly gardens are an area where we communicate with ourselves and others, learn to own your space and do not be afraid to move things on in the garden if they are not doing well.
Remember you are a unique gardener in your style and how you garden, embrace the opportunity to have a go. Gardens are a place for survival for our hearts and natures little friends, cause they need a home to.
So take it upon yourself to find out what makes you as a gardener tick and have another go at making a great contribution to the world of gardening.
