Some things I’ve learned about — and from — gardening.

This post should be short. But it’s way, way long.

I have the luxury of two gardens. One is on a sunny patio in Brooklyn. The other is in a wooded area halfway between a bay and a beach in Long Island. I am at best an inexpert gardener; I do not have a black thumb, but I don’t really know what I’m doing. Nevertheless, gardening has lessons for us all.

Lesson 1: Experimenting is fun, and even fruitful, but it’s better to start with a plan.

I’ve generally approached gardening as having basically four elements:

1. pick a plant you like the looks of (or the taste of, in the case of herbs and vegetables)
2. put it in some dirt
3. water it
4. prune it sometimes

In this way I’ve learned a bit about the blooming and growth cycles of, for example, dahlias and Asiatic lilies, and I’ve found I’m good at getting a tomato plant to produce tomatoes (despite generally doing it wrong, every. time.), and a jalapeño to makes peppers. Roses want me to be lucky.

But I’ve also learned that it’s kind of a bummer to have everything bloom all at once, and then never again. I’ve learned that it’s disappointing to have some pest shorten the blooming period, making you feel as if you could blink and miss the blossoms.

I’ve learned that height matters — tall plants steal sunlight from short plants, if you put them in the wrong places. I’ve learned that some plants have no business in a pot, ever; that not all potted plants grow well in the same kind of soil or want the same amount of water or light.

So while I love it when the lilies bloom and the echinacea flowers and the peppers pop, I’ve come to feel ambivalent about this ‘success’. It could just as easily go the other way. This year, Shasta daisies were decimated by aphids, and I’m pretty sure they’ll never bloom (this year); last year, the zinnias and dahlias were lackluster, so I ditched them this year.

I’ve had this patio garden for four summers; the woodsy garden for three — as much goes wrong as goes right, and I’m constantly having to play catch up after doing something wrong (or not doing anything at all).

In a way, this is how I feel about myself in general. I mean, I’m lucky, I work hard at things, I’m creative and resourceful, and I’m conscientious enough to feel guilty when I screw up. I have the resources to mend my mistakes and to try to learn from them. But I rarely feel successful. My competencies shine in the clutch — but when there’s all the time in the world to plan, when something isn’t absolutely necessary, I struggle to focus.

Like a lot of things, gardening can be pretty forgiving. Except when it isn’t. And the sense of being a total fraud in the garden can really rock you. I know people who insist they have black thumbs. I bet they failed at growing something they were told was simple by watering it too much or too little, putting it in too sunny or too shady of a spot.

The problem isn’t our natural gifts and talents — it turns out cultivating plants isn’t instinctual. You have to learn how to do it, to do it well. But learning about gardening is … hard.

Lesson 2: Unintended consequences is just another phrase for not paying attention and not thinking it through.

Literally every year, something goes poorly. Aphids attack a plant, sapping its early buds and shortening bloom times. Squirrels gnaw off the buds on a rhododendron in the winter, so no flowers bloom in the spring. A hosta fails to thrive. An echinacea starts mutating. (Literally, it looks like a mutant.) One plant gets rust, another black spot, slugs and snails come in the pre-dawn hours, and deer sneak in when we’re not looking.

What is even happening here, echinacea?

Hang on though. I said it happens every year. Many of these threats to the plants are entirely predictable. And some of them can be prevented. After the first year of planting tomatoes, I learned that on an urban patio, you have to protect these fruits from squirrels; in a woodsy one, squirrels and all the other critters. So, a thing I do every year is cage the vegetables. I built a special one for the raised bed on the patio; I just stake and fence the vegetables in the woods. And you know what, it works.

So what made me think I could get away with not caging the tiny rose bush in the woods? Or the new rhododendron — why did I take down the fencing around it in March, while the deer were their most desperate, just because it was annoying me (instead of just, you know, fixing the fencing)? Those plants recovered, but only because they’re incredibly hardy, and I got my act together to protect them, after the fact.

If I know I’m always going to get aphids on the patio, why don’t I do something about it? For one thing, I’ve only had one reliable tool in my toolkit for combatting them — insecticidal soap. I’ve also used ladybugs, and maybe they help, but they don’t stick around, and they don’t come back on their own, and I don’t know, maybe there’s a bird or bug that eats them? Aphids come out in mid-to-late spring every year. Just when it’s getting warm enough to look forward to spending time in the garden, they’ll start turning up. So — why do I only notice them when they’re out of control?

Lesson 3: Trust experts enough to try their methods, instead of ignoring them, if you want to learn and make progress. They’re experts for a reason.

Everything you read says the best way to deal with them is to spray them off the plant with a hose. But you know what: I can’t shake a disbelief in that tactic, so I spray with insecticidal soap instead. Why am I disbelieving? I genuinely don’t know better than an agricultural college’s extension service. But I keep thinking, “that can’t be right.” Does my inaction make things worse? I have no idea, but it definitely doesn’t make things any better.

There’s another tactic, which is to plant a variety of plants — especially those that attract beneficial predators. But… that would require doing research, making sense of it, and then planning a garden. And you see, I tend to wing it, because I’m both pretty smart and pretty lucky.

(Also maybe not that smart.)

I know that some of the plants aren’t getting enough light, and some are getting too much. Plants weaken or look soggy, they burn or dry out. But I feel profoundly uncertain about the path of the light in my back terrace and in my woodsy garden — how much sun is “full sun”, anyway?

And then there are plants that I like the look of, and are perennials, and do okay in partial shade, but… they don’t like potting soil, or they just don’t like to be in pots. Why didn’t I pay better attention to that before I bought them? Why didn’t I check to see how tall and how wide a plant will get when it’s mature, so it has enough room? All of this information is labeled — on the plant, on the web, on the tag. The garden center employees can often tell you everything you need to know. Can’t I read? Don’t I ask questions for a living? Why don’t I better engage with these resources?

Lesson 4: Consider the possibility that you don’t plan things because you don’t really know how.

Gardening is aesthetics. I love my gardens, but I haven’t been very deliberate about the design of the patio garden. Why didn’t I check to see when in the season different things bloom? Why didn’t I look up which plants rebloom and which don’t? I keep treating perennials like annuals. This is me just not being thoughtful about it. It’s not like I don’t know that root structures develop over time; that some plants spread; that plants might choke out other plants if they’re too close together. I know these things, but I haven’t bothered to plan for it. I’m creating the equivalent of technical debt in the garden, yet again.

I do a lot of things by feel — I always have. I hate outlining my writing ahead of time, preferring to just write and go. I find breaking down a big task into its component parts to be incredibly challenging, not because I don’t know all the little parts, but because I usually feel like the little parts don’t add up to anything on their own, that it’s better to just start doing something. A sketch in a notebook isn’t a garden, I subconsciously believe; plants and soil and water is a garden.

Even now, I’m writing this the same way I garden — just put all the words down and then edit it later. Plant all the bulbs and tubers and tiny plants and seeds, and then prune and spray and rip out the plants or move them if they fail to thrive. I’m also not just doing this. Right now, I’m half-listening to the news. I’m quarter-looking at social media. I’m eighth-thinking about all the shit I have to do tomorrow. In the same way, I do one big planting all on one day, usually just as the poor little starts are about to dry out and die, while listening to music or podcasts, and wandering off to do something else from time to time, and then I don’t come back to it for awhile, except to water a bit.

I recently started working with an amazing executive coach — she’s teaching me how to plan things out, how to break things down into smaller parts, how to do one thing at a time. To be honest, I suck at it. Even if I do the homework, I have not shaken the habit of failing to update people on the progress. Just leave it with me, I’ll take care of it, even if it’s at the last minute. My last minute, half-assed attempt is often pretty damned good, I know. Of course, this is not a comforting thought. If my last minute, half-assed attempt is so damned good, just think how great it would be if I planned ahead, started early, took my time!

But I can’t shake the feeling that if I do all the homework and come up with a plan and check in with others, that the aphids and deer and fungus will put the lie to this whole “planning ahead” thing, that it somehow still won’t add up to anything like success. Better to gamble than to plan.

This is idiotic, by the way. But it is how I think.

I have been sent articles about square foot gardening. I have skimmed the lede and then not read them. I have been told that one of the secrets to my favorite garden is that they’ve planted a variety of flowers and shrubs so there’s always something blooming, and there’s a contrast of color and height and width, but I keep putting a bunch of Asiatic lilies in the same container with nothing else. I’ve heard from people about how mulching helps with moisture and weeds but only just started mulching flower beds this year after I noticed our landscaper mulched everything he planted. I’m just aping his considered practice, hoping for the best. There’s a lot of cargo-culting in my garden.

Lesson 5: There might be pleasure in doing it yourself, but you shouldn’t go it alone.

Every gardener I know has some variation on this ritual: you make yourself a cup of tea or coffee and you go look at your plants. How are they doing today? Is anything blooming yet? Do they need water or pruning or to be sprayed? It’s delightful — and a lot of what makes it so pleasurable is that it’s this meditative, solitary thing you do at the start of the day (or the end of it, I do it twice a day).

But doing it yourself can be incredibly lonesome. You can read — or not — all the gardening discussion boards and blogs, or watch all the videos. But who will you ask for advice? Who will look at that weird bug and tell you if it’s beneficial or not (It’s not — it’s a Japanese Beetle, it’s milkweed aphids, it’s an earwig)? Who will ooh and aah over your cherry tomatoes, and remember the lily blossoms, and ask if you’re planting dahlias this year?

Two things have happened in the past week that drove this home to me: the first was when my mother-in-law showed me how to prune my tomatoes, and gave me some simple advice on how to properly prune them next time. She commiserated about spots in the lawn where grass won’t grow. She was a wee bit jealous of the bee balm plant I got to bloom. It was nice to spend a bit of time with a more experienced (better! smarter!) gardener.

The second was when I asked “Is there a gardening twitter?” and was, in short order, invited to join a group of gardeners. I learned so much from reading the threads in one afternoon, that I did something amazing. I made a plan.

Lesson 6: “A strategy is a plan for a desired outcome within a set of constraints.”

I tell clients and audiences this all the time. Because it’s true. Even for gardening.

I started with being clear about my desired outcome: I want a variety of flowers blooming and healthy from late spring through the fall, and then to come back next year.

Then I got clear about the constraints.

Most of my pots are too small, some drain too fast, others don’t seem to drain ever.

I have obstructions of light and space — trees, rosebushes, an old clothesline tower, a compost tumbler, the neighbor’s wisteria and raspberry bushes, a 5-story building, a couple of cinderblock walls.

There are two spots on the patio that get full sun — 6 or more hours of sunlight. There’s a section of the patio that is in full shade — 6 or more hours of indirect light. The rest is in “half shade, half sun”.

I want to plant in the fall so the roots can get established before the spring. So I’ll have to focus on plants that my online garden center will ship to my zone in the fall, and that will survive in the winter.

I’m in zone 7, but we can have pretty harsh winters, and containers tend to be just a bit more exposed than established plants in the ground. So I want to focus on plants that are hardy to zone 5 or 6 (where it’s colder). I sort through the site— perennials, container friendly, zone 7. Then I go through based on light requirements: full shade, full sun, half and half; and sort again by blooming times: mid-spring to early summer, early-to-late summer, late summer-to early fall, early to mid-fall.

Okay, so now it’s time to shop, er, plan.

As I scroll through the plant store website, I’m comparing to a list of plants I found that attract beneficial insects that will eat aphids and beetles. I look at colors I like — reds, purples, oranges, reds, yellows. I look at the mature heights and widths — some should be tall, some should be shorter; some should be thinner, some should be full. I look for plants that re-bloom or continuously bloom.

I take an inventory of the plants I’ll keep on the patio. 10 or so Asiatic Lilies, three Echinaceas (though one has aster yellow, a disease, so probably should be pulled out to prevent the disease spreading), four Black Eyed Susans, two hostas, two clematis. The echinacea would prefer full sun; the hostas would prefer the shade. The others can handle the half-and-half. I have a peppermint and a catmint, a rosemary bush and a lavender bush. They like sun, though the mints need more water than the other two. I have a little lemon tree that I winter over inside, but loves it from the time the outside temperatures get warm enough at night.

I have some plants on the patio that would definitely be happier in the woodsy garden. It’s no big deal — they just don’t belong in containers on a patio. Three hydrangeas would be happier in the ground than in a pot. Same with the rhododendron, a tree that will be happier among her own kinfolk in the woods. And these Shasta Daisies don’t want to be in pots, either — so let’s try them in the ground out there, maybe they won’t just die. They’ll all ride out to the woods with me, and I’ll find some suitable, protected spots for them to live, I hope, to bloom again.

I have probably 18 pots and containers. Some are terra cotta and don’t winter very well. Some are metal and stylish, some are repurposed galvanized metal tubs, some are plastic. The vast majority are too small for the plants they contain. I’ll ditch the plastic and the cheap terra cotta and the galvanized metal, and get some right-sized containers and raised beds.

I measure the areas where I can place containers. I decide to place raised beds in the full sun and the half-and-half areas. We’ll use smaller, lower, containers in the shade under the maple. We’ll keep the best quality containers for the herbs.

I sketch the raised beds. Two will be 2'x4', one will be 2'x8'. I segment the sketches into square foot sections.

Now I go back to the list of plants I might buy and create an inventory.

• 4 sedum of a purple color, which need about two feet of space and will bloom from mid-summer through mid-fall.
• 4 daylilies of a red color that rebloom through the fall, and need about a foot and a half of space, but will get quite tall.
• 6 astilbe of a pinky-purple color that favor the shade, but tolerate some sun, and stay pretty low and only need a foot of space, and will bloom in late spring and again in late summer. Two will join the hostas in the shade, and the rest will be the front row in the half-and-half section.
• 2 coreopsis of a pink hue, which need up to three feet in full sun, and will bloom all summer into the fall.
• 2 lavender phenomenal, which need about a foot, aren’t too tall, will bloom into the fall, and are hardy to zone 5 (so they might even survive the winter).
• 2 sage plants that grow pink flowers, which also need about a foot, and aren’t very tall, but will bloom into the fall.

Then I “place” the plants in the grids — finding space for the Asiatic Lilies and the clematis, and maybe even the Black Eyed Susans (we’ll see when all the plants arrive). I choose a couple of other plants I want for the woods, and over-order a few things that if I run out of space on the patio will do fine in the ground amongst the trees on Long Island.

I find raised bed kits and containers I like. I buy them with points. I already know I will be very amused by how much soil I’ll need to have delivered from the neighborhood garden center. I already have garden fabric to protect the bottoms of the raised beds and a staple gun, so that’s set.

I turn my attention to the vegetable garden and make some decisions about what I’ll do in the spring to give lettuces, basil, and peppers a better chance than they have now, tucked in with some rather unruly tomato plants. Now that I know more about caring for tomatoes, they’ll be less unruly next year.

I look at the red maple tree and make some decisions about branches I’ll take off in the fall just to give a bit more height and spread to the tree. I take ten minutes to prune the wisteria and cut back the raspberry bushes and the vines coming in from the neighbor’s yard. I’ll dispose of all of that tomorrow.

What a mess.

I did almost nothing but this today. I filled 10 pages of my notebook with my notations about the patio and the plants and recorded all my decisions. This is more planning than I have done in weeks, and is the first time I have ever planned this patio garden.

I’ve done all I can do at this point. I’ll have to wait until the second week of September — the supplier ships so the plants arrive in time for the optimal planting season. The new raised beds and containers will arrive in a week. I’ll have time to remove the plants I want to take east, move the containers to make space for the new beds, assemble the beds, and fill them with some soil and compost.

When the new plants arrive, I’ll transplant everything into their new spots, water, and mulch. I’ll put mesh over the beds to keep the squirrels from digging. I’ll do a bit more research on what to do to ensure a safe winter.

Then I’ll wait for spring. When I’ll see if I really have learned anything.