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Gardening - an Attitude Adjustments -Part 2

© Carol Wallace

Many of us instinctively protest the idea that we change our gardening style. We've been developing that style for years, developed a strong attachment to certain types of plants and planting schemes, even if they are somewhat labor intensive. And yet sometimes the physical reality of it means that something has got to give. And that something is either you, or the garden. At least the garden as we know it now.

Perhaps you are lovers of a very formal look. Formal looks are generally high maintenance, requiring sculpting and pruning and an exactitude of planting plans that demands that anything that can't keep up with its neighbors must be evicted and quickly replaced.

But if you can't keep up with that kind of work and can't afford a gardener, you may have to learn to rethink that. Just as I have to rethink my garden of heirloom rose bushes that grow so vigorously that they are now completely out of control. If you can't keep up with it, evict it and then plant something that you can keep up with. If you don't, you either won't be gardening at all or will come to hate it.

If you must have roses, do as people in very cold climates often must and treat them as annuals.

Or you may be a lover of the exotic. Once again, this may require an attitude adjustment. It can be a lot of work, planting the tender specimens and then racing out in autumn to rescue them from that first frost, carefully cleaning and prepping them for storage - and then keeping them plump and healthy so that you can repeat the cycle the following spring.

If you truly love your dahlias or brugmansias then by all means grow a few to satisfy that urge. But once again, you may want to start thinking of most of them as annuals. I had tons of tender plants last year, from begonias and Alocasias to dahlias, Ipomoea batatas and coleus. Most of it is still in the garden, turning itself into fodder for the compost heap. The only things I had rescued were my 'Black Magic' elephant ears and my 'Bishop of Llandaff' dahlias, because they are both expensive and hard to locate. (And besides, I had to rely on my husband to do the rescuing, and it was easy to describe these to him. "The plants with the huge coal black leaves and the ones with the bright red flowers and black leaves." There aren't a whole lot of plants with black leaves of any kind in most gardens.)