Garden of My Dreams?

Ultimate Garden? Dream On! 

Each year, at the end of the academic year in late spring, I, like many gardeners, go through the same mental process. We think that this year is going to be different, that our garden will be bigger and better, with more space devoted to what we euphemistically call a hobby. Our garden dreams may very well end up looking like this:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pieskowa_Ska%C5%82a_ogr%C3%B3d_zamkowy.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Pieskowa_Ska%C5%82a_ogr%C3%B3d_zamkowy.jpg 

Or this:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hever_Castle_rose_garden_with_fountain.JPG#mediaviewer/File:Hever_Castle_rose_garden_with_fountain.JPG

Or even this:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Buenos_Aires_Entrada_al_Jardin_Botanico_Carlos_Thays.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Buenos_Aires_Entrada_al_Jardin_Botanico_Carlos_Thays.jpg

However, a common mistake is to overestimate the time and energy involved in creating and maintaining a garden. Are watering needs being met? Is enough time being devoted each week to everyone's least favorite task, weeding (yes, according to Ella Wheeler Wilcox, "A weed is but an unloved flower," but most gardeners choose to shower love elsewhere)? Is enough energy being spent in dissuading pests from your precious plants? Are compost and/or fertilizer needs being met? If plants need to be pruned or staked, is enough time and energy being devoted to these tasks? Finally, will your schedule allow time to simply be in the garden, to sit, relax, and/or meditate in the positive space you have created?

 If the answer to any of these questions is no, then it is time to scale back that dream a bit. This is not settling for "second best": it is being realistic. It is far more gratifying to start small and expand that garden as time and energy permit, throughout the growing season, than to try to keep up with a grandiose gardening plan that will leave you burned out and feeling frustrated. Trust me on this one.

Gardening is supposed to be a fun, emotionally-rewarding pastime, not a drudge or a chore; that said, anyone who wishes to garden needs to expect to put time and sweat into any gardening aspirations. According to Liberty Hyde Bailey, co-founder of the American Society for Horticultural Science, "A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them."

. And starting small and then building up the garden gradually allows the gardener's imagination to flow more freely, according to Mrs. C. W. Earle, in Pot-Pourri from an Surrey Garden, 1897: "Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination."