Be pleased with your real garden, don't persue the perfection of a picture. What you see in a photo lasted only as long as the shutter snap.
History is everything in gardening: With a site, weather, a particular plant. It solves mysteries. And it's why, when others say, "You can't do that!" you can know with deepest certainty that you can.
There's no "right way" to garden, only what suits each person and place.
Don't design your back yard from the outside looking in. Design from your window looking out.
You can put a gardener behind the wheel, but you can't keep her eyes off the landscape.
Silly gardeners! We buy pretty, comfortable benches and position them oh so carefully. But does the gardener ever sit? No! We perch momentarily and then jump up to do that next thing we see.
Happiness comes from growing what thrives, not merely survives.
If you cut a shrub back because it's just too big, and it dies, you haven't lost anything but a plant that couldn't live by your rules.
Take care with manufactured chemicals, certainly. Your safety and long term health are more important than anything. Yet don't forget that if you grow even a dozen different plants, you are surrounded by chemistry. Inside their cells even the most ordinary plants creates potent fungicides, insecticides, irritants, balms, hallucinogens, sedatives, nerve toxins, cell repair stimulants, lures, repellents... you name it. Treat all plants with respect!
If a bush is too big, don't ask "should I?" Go ahead and cut it. If it lives, great. If it dies, replace it with something better suited!
Gardeners in regions with very long summer days have a great opportunity, and should use more of the cool colors that literally glow in the low light of morning and evening.
Watch out for trees and traffic. The change is slow, the impact great, yet we miss the one and mistake the other.
Low care is what we do while on our knees. Smart care is what makes the growing easier.
Take my last best advice: Try everything twice!
I have heard people say, "I garden in lieu of therapy, but therapy would be cheaper." I believe gardening's worth the price since it's at least as effective in curing head and heart of what ails us.
We blame Walt Disney for goldenrod's undeserved bad name. Despite Sneezy's pronouncement, plants such as goldenrod with heavy, insect-carried pollen rarely cause allergic reaction.
Wood's not natural mulch for a woodland garden. Do you see forest trees shatter into a zillion pieces and fall? No. They fall, then decompose, then spread.
The best gardener is a baby killer. Baby insects are much easier to kill than adults, and haven't yet developed the big mouths and voracious appetite of the adolescent.
The very best garden is a new one, on virgin ground. Plants leap out of that spot.
We think we learn by growing a plant but we can't know if it's just surviving or truly living? We really don't know anything about a plant until we kill it.
You don't know the plant until you've killed it. Then you've learned something.
When many plants are out of the picture in winter, it becomes clear that many of them should be pitched out. It's also much easier to do that before they come up and begin to talk to us.
Gardeners do first, read later. Why not? Plants are very gracious in accepting an apology.
There are far too many self esteem problems in the world as it is. No sense taking on plant guilt, too.
If someone says "You're not doing that right," hand him the shovel, sit and watch. That's the right way to garden.
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