By Carol Wallace

I used to wonder how it was that two people of like intel-
ligence 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 fascina-
ting.

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 teach-
es 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 demand-
ing, 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 perfect-
ion 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. Closer to
perfection than I am - but we both still have a long journ-
ey to take together. I wish you the same good fortune.

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GardenGuides Newsletter-April 18, 2006