I finally am satisfied with my front yard (for now). On to the back! :)

Good to hear, you're half way there!

It really was quite pleasant this weekend going up front and pulling weeds. I was finished in 30 minutes but I did hang out for a little longer. I worked so hard getting it in shape and just puttering around was the bomb!

No.

I dread "finishing" my garden. I'm afraid I might over garden at one point or start offering free design services to my friends.

Interesting question. I'm feeling good about how far I've come, but I'm still far from being satisfied with it. I went through the acquisition years where most of my time was spent planting. When those years were over, I felt a bit lost without a constant stream of plants waiting to go in.

Now I have plants maturing, and I'm able to concentrate more on weeding, mulching, deadheading, rejuvenating shrubs, etc., which will always be the case, but I'm still spending a lot of additional time moving plants around and reworking areas that aren't quite right.

I'm curious about what you said, GardenHo. How does it feel to be close to being satisfied with the way it all looks? Can we reach that point of being content to maintain the gardens without wanting to create or change things again? That's hard for me to imagine, but that might be because I'm not there yet.

Not even near...and haven't been, even after 3 decades. I almost get there...then start over...or get onto something which will never be finished in 3 lifetimes (or ever).

In truth, not sure I would recognise 'finished' or even 'satisfaction' because I appear to have the attention span of a cocker spaniel and a seemingly unlimited seedlist to work through...then all those different styles...and themes...and geographical fripperies.

My main garden is on a public allotment so every summer, I have to endure the smirks and sighs while my neighbours recline in deckchairs or pick the products of their labours (veggies) while I am still grubbing about with tweezers and pliers in the gravel garden...or wrestling with some existential quandary in the sweetpea border (when to finally give up the deadheading) or worse, bleeding and beaten attempting order amongst the gigantic and ill-advised ramblers.

Of course, they then have to cook and store their products (5 tons of courgettes and runner beans) whereas I can simply nip to the takeaway, eat some toast and generally slack off on the household front (as I do all the time anyway).

Terrifying to imagine what I would do if I was finished...drugging and drinking? politics (shudder)? tropical fish?

Cooper I understand your puttering and I enjoy it as well!

Rosie I laughed out loud reading your post, thank you for that. Reminded me...I have a former coworker that keeps hinting to help design her garden.

Sandy I have to say it feels very, very good. I have enough beds to keep busy just maintaining alone. Is it perfect? No. Could it look better? Of course. But I'm now satisfied. I have enough spring summer and fall bloomers in each bed, that I now have color all season. I've also added more shrubs and evergreens for winter interest. Now I will be able to focus more on my lawn. I have an acre, which I've never had the time or energy to keep it nice since creating the beds. This week I'll be receiving a shipment of border to complete the beds. This makes me even happier knowing I'll have no more edging to do, or fighting to keep the grass from creeping in. Second to sod removel, the edging was my most dreaded task. I look forward to laying the border, knowing it will now be complete! Will I be content? I think so....

Camp you crack me up! Face it, you were born to garden and you always will! Nothing wrong with that, that's for sure. I mean look at your alternatives lol. We wouldn't want you to do anything else. You never fail to entertain with your witty and humorous garden adventures, please don't ever stop!

For me, ornamental gardening is as much process as product (the veggies are another matter) so yup, I am satisfied. It gets me outside, brings me pleasure and exercise, and gets a few of the folks flying by during their daily commute to slow down a bit and even sometimes stop and chat about the garden, provides food and homes for birds, so what more could I wish for? And as Camps said, consider the alternatives . . . go to a smelly, crowded gym for exercise? Indulge in vices? Sit and eat bonbons and read novels? Not much interest in the first two, and plenty of time for the last when I am no longer physically able to work in the garden.

No, not finished because the tunneling voles eat the roots off my plants and thus many are dead each spring. Everyday it's setting traps and smashing down tunnels and replacing plants. My property is on bedrock and rocky shale, so it's a haven for critters. These gardens are never finished.

But some days I can just enjoy walking through them and enjoy the flowers and veggies with a smile, and pray for a resident fox, black snake, or coyote.

No. For me, "satisfaction" would signal the end of my artistic drive to strive for continually higher creativity, which would only happen when I expire.

Is a gardener ever finished? I guess it will be when I am.

Being done with my garden is not a concept I'm familiar with! When I'm not actually out in the garden fussing over something, I'm salivating over new plants I've come across, and trying to figure out ways to fit them in. I think there are two types of gardeners--ones who are design-oriented, and the others who are collection oriented. I'm on the collection oriented end of the scale, which I think is much harder to ever reach a finishing point, because there is no real goal. Or, at least, that goal gets moved out every time some new variety of something-something is released!

Um yes, Kirsten - I fear you have hit the nail with the hammer. I also find myself on the collecting end...although that is less a reason for moaning than my woeful attempts at design, apart from the most rudimentary efforts (throwing some woodchip around and sticking a few plant supports in the ground)...which more or less emphasises why I am never going to be satisfied and probably never done...because it is a planty, but awful mess.

However...I have a nursery acquaintance of advancing years who has recently taken to the whiskey bottle...but far from looking a disaster, his 'garden' is a delicious mix of various thugs which seem to have reached a delightful equilbrium with no effort on his part...at least for the last 4 years or so. Euphorbia polychroma, various geraniums, verbena, geums, daylilies and anemones have colonised every inch of ground in a harmonious mish-mash. True, the bones of the garden were already in place...but I would not be disconcerted if this happened to my garden spaces...in fact, this is the only 'endgame' I have in mind for the woods.

GardenHouse - enjoy your peaceful hiatus...but somehow, I sincerely doubt you will be grinding to a halt anytime soon.

Satisfied, yes; but I'd say "satisfied" can always be improved on.

Also, for me, change is the main reason for perennial beds over bedded annuals (= lots of different perennials blooming at different times through the growing season). And there's always room for more colour.

I find changing and adding becomes just part of routine perennial bed maintenance.

An admonition to 'get satisfied' should be an admonition over in the Accessible Gardening - GardenWeb - ''forum is for the discussion of gardening by and for people with physical limitations...'' but I don't see it. At some point we get to old or too infirm and we all need to be satisfied. Satisfaction might mean being able to afford a caretaker who responds to our every whim, or setting before a big screen with a wireless keyboard posting unwanted and unwelcome advise.

Satisfied? Hahaha - you're funny.

Interesting responses :)

No, I could never be satisfied. I just love all of the things you can do in a garden, even weeding. Gardening is just who I am. I could never just quit gardening.

Betsy I think you may have misunderstood...

This was not about quitting. It's about being satisfied with the garden/beds that you currently have. Still maintaining them by weeding mulching pruning pinching etc...

Major dissatisfaction: having planted things I should never have planted (turned out to be too spreading/invasive for me and now want to curtail their spread or just eliminate them). Wish I'd never heard of spring bulbs, like Chionodoxa and Puschkinia. Beginning to feel that way about Anemone ranunculoides (gets spread around by working perennial beds), though at least it's an ephemeral. Nevertheless, it'll be hard to get to dislike the slower spreading Anemone robinsoniana (below: last spring).

I love that garden, Dave. I know I'd be satisfied if I achieved that!

Never. It's what I call my eco-hobby and exercise all rolled into one :~)

With my front yard regarding plants not quite yet, but a lot of that has to do with the old front porch that need to be taken down and re-pour, once that is taken care of then we can finally do the siding in the front part of the house ( we just did the sides and back) so it will look somewhat completed.

The backyard... heck no! Not even close!

Rox