Even if your gardening activity does not extend beyond a window box, the plants need planting and checking for pests. In other words, fairly continuous attention is required to succeed.
Gardening is not an exact science, more of an art-form slowly learned and in most cases this is a life-long process. If you have been gardening for a number of years you develop an eye for things that a mere novice would miss. This is I suppose like a sort of early warning system to alert the gardener to potential problems that may lie ahead. A plant in the early stages of wilting, or leaves showing mineral deficiency may go completely unnoticed by the beginner.
A trained eye is an important tool and an important first step along the way to becoming a better gardener. Recognising possible problems and symptoms is one thing, learning how and when to respond is quite another. Then there is the art of placement. Planting a large border successfully so that height and colour flow harmoniously is not usually instinctive and has to be learned the hard way.
One very crucial starting point to the art of gardening successfully is to know your plants. By that I mean learning what plants enjoy what conditions. Very often a plant's original home is the key to understanding its environmental needs. We all as gardeners push the boundaries all the time, but trying to grow rhododendrons or camellias on a lime or chalk soil to take a rather obvious example is only going to lead to disappointment.
Gardeners in the British Isles are very lucky as we can grow a wide range of plants in our temperate climate aided by the Gulf Stream. In north Scotland the famous garden of Inverewe boasts such plants as Australian gum trees, sweetly scented Chinese rhododendrons, exotic trees from Chile and Blue Nile lilies from South Africa, all growing on a latitude more northerly than Moscow! The secret is to understand the plants needs and the local growing conditions.
Returning to my own small plot, this summer has been exceptionally dry, especially during the last couple of months where rainfall has been in very short supply. This has made life difficult for ground feeding birds such as blackbirds and song thrushes. As I write we are enjoying the first appreciable rainfall for nearly eight weeks, it's been a long time since it rained all day. Watering your garden by artificial means is useful as a last resort but it never comes anywhere near the penetration of nature's own.
