I can relate. I live on a corner and mine only look good from a driveby--don't look too close--there's plants still in containers stuck in between the weeds. At least they all get watered!

This is a phenomenon that affects nearly every professional gardener I know. Too much time spent designing, installing, tending other peoples' gardens and not enough time or energy left for one's own! And we also tend to be rather aggressive gardeners, either collecting or trialing every new plant that comes down the pike, all those rare and unusual beauties that few others have and of course, nothing really that can be considered low maintenance.

I have an ongoing dialog with my older brother wherein he insists my own garden should be an advertisement for my design services. I, on the other hand, insist it should not be. It is a collector's garden and is certainly not representative of how I design for clients. It is overplanted, constantly in a state of flux and nearly always needs some serious maintenance in various areas. It is MY garden, my sanctuary and release, and few clients other than some that are close friends even know where it is.

I have even taken to hiring work out in my garden! I am much too painstaking and picky in its maintenance and find that hiring out the maintenance in some areas is a much more efficient approach than attempting it all myself. That way, my limited time in it is spent doing the work that I prefer - adding new plants, editing and moving things and fine-tuning.

Like Susan, the driveby approach is fine - it certainly looks like an avid gardener lives there but it doesn't bear close scrutiny:-)

I'm the opposite. I can't wait to get home and 'play' in our garden. Our garden is our pride and joy and has been featured in magazines, etc. The first thing I do when I get home is walk around the garden.. again first thing after supper...and so on. Something new emerges or flowers every day. What butterflies are there? Birds? In fact, just thinking about it makes me want to go back out into the garden and poke around to find something to do. There's not a square foot in our garden that doesn't have something growing in it that's 'special' to us.