Wow, you got a lot of work done last year! I hope that you’ll get to sit back this year and enjoy your successes!

I’m very excited, but nervous too. We got an insane amount of snow over the winter. It will start to melt in the next few weeks and I hope that my newly planted tulips, daffodils and bearded irises will not rot.

"Or is all this quite normal in the world of gardening?"

To a large degree, yes :-) Every gardener experiences these things. But as the years go on and you gain experience and plant knowledge, they become less and less significant and occur less frequently. You have learned what works well for you, what may have problems (and then gets eliminated), any soil issues have been rectified and you have boned up on your horticulture and plant husbandry. And you learn to pace yourself. There will always be a new plant or two that proves not to be as winter hardy as you thought or not sufficiently established to make it through a rough first winter but you learn to take that in stride as well.

It does get easier 😊

I agree with Gg. I was reading your post and thinking I have been there and I know where the problem lies. The key is to pace yourself. Remember you are doing it for enjoyment, immediate and long term, to have things to look forward to and have a sense of achievement/almost instant gratification (wonderfully within weeks you can harvest veggies/fruits or blooms from seed). If you feel a sense of dread, exhaustion when thinking of the garden, you are taking on too much work. The garden is always evolving, hopefully getting better as you find what works and what doesn't. Some plants will always die. The key is to recognize when to give up on them and not to be stubborn about growing something. I love petunias and snapdragons but they are constantly succumbing to root rot, fusarium/verticillium wilt in my garden. So I am trying to give up on them until I can eliminate the fungal infection. But then I also have a petunia going for it's third year, also a couple of two year old Mathiola Incanas blooming away right now and they bring me such joy. ὠ0

To quote an old Yankee farmer that I knew over 50 years when I complained about the weather, bugs, etc in my first garden: If you can't take it, don't farm!

Thanks everyone for your responses. While I was aware with the constant adjustments and corrections needed in the garden and the learning process of those year by year, I couldn’t help but feel that there are far more problems in my garden than anyone elses. Or maybe I just feel that way becaused I haven’t been gardening as long(6years) and haven’t experienced it all?

I guess I am a little on the impatient side(except for propagating plants-I can wait and see them grow forever as I want) but I try to cram in all these projects at once because the sooner I get these done the sooner I can sit back and relax in my garden but I am learning that it just doesn’t work that way.. one problem arises after another and everytime it happens my stress level pumps up and I’m pretty sure it subtracts 1 year off my lifespan for every bad event that happens. And since I also propagate most of my plants, it feels even worse when I see them fail after spending all the time and effort babying and caring for them.

I guess we’ll see which plants come back up and which don’t. I already see my asarum takoi dead….

Easy rule to follow: plant more of what lived.

And yes, it's just gardening. There are ALWAYS projects if you're a gardener.

Last year we built an enclosure for our berry patch. I call it a "patch" but it's 6 blueberry plants, a row of blackberries and three terraced beds; they are completely encased in chicken wire and hardware cloth with the hardware cloth trenched down a foot around the perimeter. This is specifically to keep out the squirrels, catbirds and ground hogs.

This year we have to replace all of the rotten wood from other raised beds, I want to install drip irrigation (gravity and pressured) and redo the rain barrels.

Next year, I plan to expand the perennial and annual beds around the house. Decided if I'm going to live in this house for another 20 years, I'm going to make it what I want it to be.

You have done what sounds like a tremendous amount of work. I would take this year to enjoy it and take notes for next year. You deserve a year off.

Spring is still a month and a half away for me

Heruga, almost all your posts convey worry or panic, often about problems which are minor or which haven’t yet happened or which might never happen. I doubt your garden has more problems than anyone else’s. I think you just see more problems, real and imaginary. Your posts also frequently exhibit a desire for perfection, control and fast results. Gardening just doesn’t suit those characteristics. Spring is beautiful and exciting, not frightening. So some things died over winter. (Perhaps.....There’s every chance you're just expecting them too soon and they’ll show in due course. ) That’s nature. Try to relax, appreciate the small changes every day brings at this time of year, enjoy the beauty, be more fatalistic and calm down. Or perhaps gardening just isn’t the right hobby for you. There should be no stress. That’s one reason why we do it.

I think you need to back off gardening. It shouldn’t be stressful nor make you nervous.

Floral, what a timely reply. I left work feeling extremely angry, not really sure why. Then checked my phone and saw more news about the war that made me feel as of I were BOILING inside.

Tried some meditation and breathing but when I got home, I walked into my backyard and started looking at my winter-sown containers, then the natives i planted in the very back last fall, then discovered the potted camilla did not overwinter. Gave the chickens some treats and checked the bluebird nest box, by the time I came back inside, I felt back to normal.

That’s what a garden should do, and you should enjoy the small moments and daily joys that come with one.

yup, I am looking at the sprouting peony in my 12" container that I potted bare root probably 4 years ago and thinking this has to be the year I get a bloom or two. Who knows if it will bloom or not. By the time it's time for it to bloom there will so much else blooming in my little balcony garden that I would not miss a beat but right now I am looking forward to it. :) Also watching hundreds of seedlings that I started from seed in January and the tulip and crocus bumps and smiling...Life is good...and I am not even a glass half full person so this is just the magic of gardening. Perhaps Heruga finds joy in something else. Perhaps they should pursue that more vigorously and delegate gardening projects to someone else...

I just re read your original post and I think you have really described what the problem is. You have a new house/property and that’s a big responsibility. So, maybe you bit off more than you could chew last year and instead of enjoying gardening, it became a lot of work and a big chore.

“I did many big projects like building my woodland garden, meadow garden, a 17x12 ft pond with falls, rock garden, mulching and grading, fixing my 120ft ditch, 27 ft raised bamboo bed, 3 raised beds for my vegetable garden and maintaining all my fruits/veggies that produce almost every day, installing 2000 squash ft of zoysia and maintaining that.”

Heruga, I haven’t done that much in the past 5 years, let alone 1 season! Lol

I hope that you read your own post over and understand that you are making yourself miserable by trying to do too much too fast. Most seasons, I have a project that I want to finish. Some years I can’t even get to that one project, because all I have time and energy for is maintaining the garden I have.

I started my garden life with only one project, a vegetable garden and that’s all I did in the garden for years. I had small kids and a busy life. Later when the kids were older, I looked around at an aging landscape with shrubs that were now in too much shade and not looking good and decided to start working on the rest of the property. And I had a lot to learn. That was the start of my gardening life and I love it. I have had a few seasons where too many things were wrong and nothing was going well, but thankfully, every spring, I manage to find my gardening joy again. That old saying ‘There’s always next year.’ Has to be your mantra, sometimes.

One year I created a long bed and edged it with rock. One year our son built us new raised vegetable beds. I pace myself, I do the gardening tasks that I enjoy doing and look forward to doing. I don’t expect my garden to become a showcase. I just want it to be well maintained and try this plant and that shrub and one new idea of gardening that appeals to me and it’s all very open ended.

And when you have too many projects going on, then nothing is finished, things are not working out, everywhere you look there’s an issue. I can spend the winter making plans and then never get to do any of them the next season. And that I’ve found frustrating, but the way I got past that was to put blinders on. I just developed the approach that I was going to focus on the one part of the yard that looked the best, that I liked the best and make sure I took care of that part of the garden and ignore the rest. I decided that I wanted at least the front of the house to be presentable, so that is the area I concentrate the most on and get done first. And IF I could get to another area, great. The areas I do as a project are often just small little sections at a time. And when I have those the way I want them, I choose another project.

Creating a garden takes a long time, it’s not a quick project. Maybe you can do more than I can. And maybe part of what you enjoy is being able to see your ideas completed. And that’s fine too, but when you see the effect your plans and choices are having and see the anxiety and stress and lack of enjoyment, then that should tell you, you are doing too much and going about it in a way that is not pleasurable. All you have to do is figure out how to get the most enjoyment out of it and lower your expectations and be in it for the long haul.

GGal points out that you garden by profession. So maybe you feel a responsibility to have your garden be a showcase. And maybe you have to do a LOT for your work and maybe coming home and doing the same at home, is just too draining. See if you can think that through a little more and give yourself the freedom not to expect your garden to be a show case and instead do what you enjoy the most, slow down the time frame you expect to get everything done by and enjoy your garden.

I am saying what many others here are saying, like Anna, when I am feeling stressed about everything else in life, just going out to the garden, connecting with nature, doing gardening tasks, looking at what is going on out there and I start to feel so much better. Of course, that may mean not going to look at the part of the garden that is not working out at the moment! [g]

I had to decide whether it was going to be the destination or the journey. Once I realized that I had no idea if I was ever going to arrive at the destination I was working toward, I also realized that lucky for me, I love the journey.

Thank you for more helpful responses everyone. When I first did my internship at a botanical garden 6 years ago I was so intrigued and impressed by what a garden actually looks like and the effects it gave off to me. I visited many other botanical gardens and arboretums afterwards in the coming years and everytime I would go to those places I felt so soothed, relaxed, and just wish I could just sit under a tree smelling the fresh air from nature, hear the birds/insects chirp all day, watch the blooming plants with pollinating visitors.. there was so much nature going on all at once that it all seemed like a dream to a nature loving guy like me. That’s where I developed my big dream of creating one myself. A nature paradise. I also have a history of anxiety and depression since I was a kid, this is also where gardens and nature really helped me improve(was able to stop pills!) So no this is not something I would give up on that easily.

So to achieve that dream I was so eager to work on it once I moved into a house and spent pretty much everyday doing something in the garden last year. Didn’t know it would be this stressful to do all this work at once if its actually something I liked doing. But I guess because it is my dream I HAD to get this done and something not going well means I’m a step behind or an obstacle formed in my dream and I must not let that happen. That’s where my stress forms. I also do all these projects at once because once we have kids, I won’t be able to do any of this for another 18 years or so. I wanted the big installations done at year one and let the coming years be just maintenance. Although I am laying another 350 sq ft of zoysia sods this year.

I don’t however feel like I’m doing the same thing over at my house after coming home from work though. My garden is my garden and the gardens over there is over theres.

But yea like you guys said, I do try to appreciate some of the small things too. I saw one of my wintersown perennials sprouting like crazy, I saw 2 of my aconitums(that I just chopped in half last fall) emerging nicely, my iris and bleeding heart grown from seed that I planted last fall coming back up, all of the 60+ perennials/tree seedlings/cuttings I propagated last year(another one of my projects I forgot to mention) are nice and alive(Not sure about my platycodons I don’t see them yet but they are late emergers)

I hope I can really enjoy soon.

I hope I can really enjoy soon.

You already are!

Heruga, Your visits to botanical gardens and the impression they left on you sound inspiring. Personally, I can barely sit still in the garden. I want to get up and be doing things. I like the act of doing, as much as I like the result.

One thing I want to point out to you, when you go to a botanical garden and see the finished result, you are looking at the work of many many people. Not something one person did on their own.

And the idea that you HAVE to get something done, just tells me that you haven’t accepted the fact that you aren’t in control and you can’t ‘make’ things happen. You can plan it, you can work on it but that doesn’t mean it’s all going to turn out the way you want or be successful or then you are done and can just enjoy your garden.

If you can design and plan and create an entire garden and landscape in a year or two - that’s pretty amazing but that’s your choice and you have to accept that it’s not going to be enjoyable and without stress until you get it finished. And hopefully, when it is done, you like it and don’t want to change it all around, the way I always do. [g]

Prariemoon, that makes sense. I’ll try to work on changing my perspective on this. I guess I didn’t realize the realities of some of the bad things that can happen along the ways of creating a garden of a professional level. Though I will try as long as I physically can but maybe just accept some hard truths that can come along with it. If more than 2/3 of my plants in my garden have some kind of issue, then that’s when I will really start to think something is not right.

Your fellow gardeners have, for the most part, had to accept these realities and still get happiness out of gardening. Most of us were blissfully unaware of how complex the garden is, to start out with. You start out not knowing what you don't know. You study and listen to other gardeners and their experiences, but a garden is a living thing and each property has it's own ecology that plants have to conform to. And you have a new property so you don't know what it needs yet, what works best with what it has to offer.

For a long time, my aim has been to use as many bullet proof plants as I can. That has helped. I also garden organically, so if a plant has a disease or an insect problem, then I have limited ways to respond. So, I focus a lot on avoiding problems before they start where I can. And bullet proof plants help me do that. Take for instance, a sedum, they are indestructible. In my garden, and many others, they never have an insect or disease problem. They have never been killed by cold. I still have the first sedum 'Autumn Joy' that I ever planted. They divide and multiply easily and grow quickly. Look good from spring to fall.

For a long time I wouldn't grow a rose, because I garden organically and I thought they would be the hardest plant to do that with. But I love roses, so eventually I tried them and I'm so glad I did. But it's been a mission to find roses that are no spray, and hardy that fit my methods. I've bought probably 20 roses over the past 10 years, and I've ended up wtih 6 in my garden that have been successful with organic methods. That's all I needed to enjoy them. I don't mind ending up shovel pruning the other 14 roses over the years. And having a garden that has more bullet proof plants, allowed me to have a reliable garden with a core stable group of plants I can rely on from year to year, so I can experiment with more difficult plants. But that was a process of learning and studying and trial and error that takes time. And I think that is what most gardeners do.

Every issue that comes up just has to be understood and addressed until it's not an issue any more. Don't be afraid of the issues. You tackle them one by one. I bring my issues here to Garden Web and ask how other gardeners have worked it out. Someone here said, that they concentrate on what grows well for them and grow more of that. I've been told that here over the years and I enjoyed my garden more after I started trying to apply that principle. It just takes time and trial and error to get the experience.

I can't wait to see what this gardening season has in store and I hope you get to the point where that is what you feel when spring approaches. Excitement! That you can accept the issues as a natural part of the process and tackle them one by one, have patience and look forward to your garden getting better and better from year to year. And enjoy the journey.

"...one problem arises after another and everytime it happens my stress level pumps up and I’m pretty sure it subtracts 1 year off my lifespan for every bad event that happens."

I'm confused. You're in the horticultural trades by profession? Or are a lawn/garden maintenance guy with no college/degree in a horticultural profession? Asking because I struggle to see how someone who has been educated, trained, and interned in a profession would constantly get so worked up about this stuff like you do -- your education and training would have (should have) prepared you.

I mean, I get it if you're a newbie to gardening -- we all go through that, and it takes time and experience to gain skill and to teach us not only technique but patience and understanding. I also get it if it's a once in a while thing, like I bit off more than I can chew (it happens to the best of us...).

I think Floral hit the nail on the head -- maybe gardening as a hobby isn't for you. You can still enjoy nature by visiting public gardens, going to parks, bird watching, hunting/fishing/camping, etc.

By profession I mean I do horticulture but I’m not a professional horticulturist by any means yet. It’s only been 5 years since I worked here and this is my first full time job out of college. I work at a retirement community of 115 acres and I have many resident ’client’s’ for landscape ideas and planting around their patios, we design common areas and actually plant most of it, prune trees/shrubs, remove dead trees, I am in charge of all the potted tropicals in our pool room(chlorinized humidity not ideal tbh but it’s always been there since I started and it’s managing), we manage and provide some assistance to the resident community garden(square slots), and I grow some stuff from cuttings and seed to use for our community. I also run tours of the place of the plants we have and did monthly plant shows about some specific plants and common showcase areas that goes live on the community TV channel for the residents. My other co workers are mostly mechanically oriented so basically I am in charge of horticultural related work here. But I do have to operate backhoes and tractors, excavators for heavy duty landscape reform.. also do snow removal during winter of course. Our community is very garden enthusiastic unlike many other retirement communities who just throw a few trees/shrubs/ perennials here and there, we have many dedicated gardens here such as the rose garden in our courtyard, several ponds with big koi, our gazebo gardens, wildflower hills, and more. But we do not mow lawns, mulch the entire place, or blow leaves as we hire our landscape contractors for that. What I do at work is pretty much the same as what I did at my internship at the botanical gardens.

I have a bachelor’s in geography with majority of my concentrates in environmental sciences as I originally wanted to pursue my career in environmental management but it wasn’t until after I graduated that I decided to pursue a career in horticulture. I did an internship for an environmental crew while I was still in college and did my other internship at the botanical garden a year later. I also have started taking some courses in horticulture to achieve a degree in that over the course of a few years but I was getting married and then the pandemic happened and with very limited time and financial responsibilities I have now, I had to delay the process. Hoping I can finish the whole program one day.

Horticulture at work is different than doing it at home, I have my co workers who can help with issues there and since I don’t own the plants so if something wrong were to happen I won’t have any financial responsibilty replacing/managing it unlike at home where I’m all on my own. Alot of what I grow at home are also uncommon plants that are somewhat harder to acquire and grow so theres some pressure there too. Stuff we use at work are mostly tough plants that are somewhat more common. My garden at home is also tied to my dream where I want it to turn into an appearance of a naturalized botanical garden so I become stressed when some obstacle strikes against my dream.

Have you thought about hiring out the work at your house to create what you want? You could be involved in the creative process and let someone else do the work, you could then maintain it. If you can afford it (or save up for it), it might take the pressure off of you.

I don’t hire for my landscape whatsoever unless some environmental disaster comes and needs major repair. I do get overwhelmed by all the work but in the end but it’s so satisfying at the end looking back at what all I did. Most of my large projects were done last year too, for this year I was just fearing the issues that can come along with the overwhelming work that gives me the anxietylike plants not coming back, pests, random dying plants, soil problems, too much rain/drought rather than the work itself. But, that’s been discussed and I intend on accepting some of the harsh realities in gardening and try my best to find ways around it or working on it.

"I couldn’t help but feel that there are far more problems in my garden than anyone elses."

The hardest lesson for all new gardeners is that not all problems require our intervention.

Mother Nature has been growing these plants for a very long time, and doesn't need us stepping in because we saw an aphid or two on a plant. Things will sort themselves out if you can just back away sometimes.

Very often our stepping in involves a knee jerk reaction with the wrong product that causes further damage, and by the time we decide to get help there's no telling what the original problem was because so many "remedies" have been thrown at it only to make it worse.

"how much work is waiting ahead of me..."

If I thought about all the work ahead of me I'd lose my mind. You can't look at it in total like that. I usually have a very loose list of what I intend to accomplish on any given day, but most often if I walk outside and do one thing then the rest of the day just unfolds.

And for me anyway, it doesn't so much matter where I start, only that I start.

Yes, spring is daunting.

Great comment Cearbhaill, I garden organically and won't even use a product that is labeled as organic. I aim for using natural materials, like liquid seaweed and alfalfa meal and compost for fertilizers and cover cropping in the vegetable beds. I never used a pesiticide or herbicide for pests. I often just let the pests take care of themselves. Your garden is an ecology and thinking you know enough to orchestrate is an easy mistake to make.

The most intervention that I will do, is to hand pick pests if their numbers are out of balance and remove a diseased plant. With a shrub, I will try pruning it back to start all over and if the disease comes back, then I either live with it, prune it frequently to keep it under control or replace it. I love Viburnums and originally bought a number of them, but over the years they all ended up with issues. I enjoyed them while I could and then replaced them one by one. I still have one left, but I've pruned it to the ground twice and I see the same issue still there, so when I get around to it, that one will be replaced too. But this approach does require that you have a tolerance for not having a perfect garden at all times. I work around that, by putting plants in the most noticeable areas, that I know are not going to be a problem.

Aphids are a good example. It is sometimes recommended that you simply spray them off the plant with a spray of water, but I don't even do that, because they are food for the ladybugs. In the spring, when I first see an aphid, I take note and go back in a few weeks and they're gone. Then I see ladybugs. That process with that great result, didn't happen over night either. I just had to restrain myself and be paitent.

On the other hand, I will search and hand pick every red leaf lily beetle I can find to preserve my lilies. RLLB has no predators here to my knowledge. They did release a lab developed pest for them and I've seen a reduction in them in the past few years but I don't know if that is the reason or not.

As for thinking of all the work ahead of me, I agree, I would be overwhelmed to think about that very often. Instead, my process, is to keep a Garden Journal and over the winter and as spring approaches, I think through everything I know needs to be done and all the things I want to accomplish and I write it all down on one long list and then I forget about it. When I head out to the garden, if I have a list of 10 items I want to get done, half the time I barely put a dent in the list. So I've started to take ONE priority out the door with me, do that and go from there. I enjoy it much more to work that way. My list is very necessary and useful, but I'm not a slave to it. It's just a reference tool.

Spring is always daunting. And I look forward to fall as a very productive season to catch up on projects I missed and prepare for the next season. I have hired help in spring and fall a few years and I would probably do it every year if I could find the help. Not easy to do. There are always jobs that you can give to someone else to free you to do something you need to do yourself.

I will see if any of last years pests return to my plants this uear. I did buy 2 capsules of predatory mites last year and released it to every plant that had mites on it. Even on my potted seedlings. Hopefully they did something. Last years spider mite infestation was bad on a lot of my plants(not to the point of active webbing) so I thought of introducing predators to my garden. But my question is How long can I expect to wait for a garden ecology to start doing its own thing before I start treating? Like last year was terrible, ok if this year is also bad is that the point where I start acting? Or wait and monitor a few years more?

I also like to make a to do list for the entire season and then also just for the given week. Sometimes yea I don’t even get to it because of regular maintenance like mowing lawns, watering all my potted plants/seedlings and stuff like that which is sometimes frustrating… always something going on

Well, I started gardening organically in 1980 on the same property I still garden on. [g] I guess I was committed to the process beyond what the results were going to be.

Major problems that I've had? I did have winter moths on all my trees and shrubs for about 6 years in a row without doing anything to address them. The only organic solution would have been to spray the whole tree, that was already 25 ft tall, every spring, with horticultural oil for an uncertain result, so I skipped that. It did leave moderate damage to the tree. Lots of dead branches up in the canopy but it started out being a very dense canopy so it still looks very good, now that there are no more winter moths. They just stopped one spring. I have no idea why. I did replace a number of shrubs and two small Amelanchier trees.

I had a bout of witch grass that invaded my vegetable garden and I did the wrong thing and used a rototiller on it and what a mistake that was, it just multiplied the root system and it was worse. I abandoned my vegetable garden for 2 years before I thought of an organic sollution - I had a left over 25ft piece of plastic from an outdoor skating rink and I covered the whole area for a year and basically solarized it and that was the end of the witch grass.

I had a very annoying influx of earwigs that were attacking plants in my vegetable garden and it took me awhile to figure out what was doing it. I looked and looked during the day and saw no pest that was causing the damage, but when I went out at night with a flashlight, I found the earwigs all over the plants. Simple solution, a plastic cup with soapy water in it and I'd just knock them into it. I did that for a couple of weeks and never had that bad a problem with them again.

I grow a lot of brassicas in the vegetable garden and I used to get a lot of those caterpillars that make a mess of the leaves. I still get some in the spring, but my plan was to just inspect the undersides of the leaves and remove them, but I got busy in the spring and forgot to do them and I noticed that I had wasps patroling the vegetable beds and I barely had any damage from the caterpillars. So, to me that is the ecology taking care of itself. You do have to be observant to notice what is happening in the garden.

So, those are just a few examples of issues that come up and what it has required from me in the way of acceptance and patience. I know in the beginning, when I had less patience, I did make up my own homemade insect spray - garlic, a drop of oil, a drop of dishwashing liquid and some red pepper flakes, blended then strained into a spray bottle. That seemed to be pretty general purpose and I had no issue with using that and still don't. It has been a couple of decades since I resorted to that.

What I was doing was taking each issue that came up, researching possible sollutions, talking to other organic gardeners and then choosing the most natural solution, sometimes doing nothing. Thinking about it, I think I do nothing more often then I do any thing else. [g]

BTW, when you talk about gardening making you happy, growing organically and supporting the ecology in my little corner, has always made me feel really connected to nature and adds a lot of happiness to my gardening.

I'm exicited and pretty chil about it. Not nervous. All sorts of things great and bad happen every year, so I don't really get nervous about it. I figure it's a zen balance thing of nature to flow with.

I learned a few hard lessons a few times about when gardening becomes the stress, it's time for me to change something because then I'm doing it wrong. For me it's important for the successes, but just as much the goodnees of the whole gardening thing mentally.

It also helps a lot that after a few years of medical and injury I'm finally back up to snuff to really really garden again- and also got everything ready and set up to start the build up on the gardens soon. Weather permitting, lol. And learning a different kind of patience, this time not Mama N, but me. What I can push or not. recognizing and being able to prioritize physical health more than I used to.

I guess if there is a nervous it's how the neighbors will react to my dumping all the random brushwood/yard debris to block their acceess into my side 10. I gotta lotta storm fall that can go into it that isn't really needed elsewhere. And the usual NTS posts. They became problematic last year in ways that this year I get to put up a barrier against their lawnmowers and golf carts.

"But this approach does require that you have a tolerance for not having a perfect garden at all times."

I'd settle for having a perfect garden ONCE, never mind at all times.

You know- I did have a perfect garden once.

I had a smaller property in South Florida, small enough that it could be kept up fairly perfectly. One year I had relatives including my Mother coming to visit, and as she had never seen this home I wanted everything perfect, and it was! I swear to you that there wasn't as much as one dead leaf on a tree- it was immaculate.

That was September of 2005.

Hurricane Wilma hit me the next month and wiped it all out. I remember wandering the neighborhood looking for my tree, finding it, cutting out all my orchids and a chunk of staghorn, and walking home through the debris- ugh. Never again.

That was fate telling me that perfection is an illusion, it isn't what I should aspire to, and the journey is the best part.

We moved and left that mess behind, started over in a new state, and I am happy to say perfection is still some years away.

CBHaill - I've actually never had a perfect garden, not even once. [g]

I don't have a large property and in the beginning, I thought it was going to be a piece of cake. But that was just a caseof not understanding how little I understood.

I wanted to address your comment about having to give up gardening after you have children. I have raised four children while gardening. You may not have the large chunks of time to work in the garden that you would like,

but you will find a few hours here and there to take care of your garden. I like to garden in six or eight hour chunks of time but there were years when I could only manage two hours in a day. Now I am old and retired and my body limits my gardening time. I still enjoy gardening. I hope writing about your fears helps you come to terms with it.

I think you need to plan ahead more

keep some kind of record on your plants and relax in general

I garden since 25y plus (fully trained) studied that stuff (landscape architecture and environmentel assessment) and have an alottment since 10 y

first surprise that veggies perform completely different that perennials (duhh, I know)

cultivars matter, by now I do not hesitate to cull a berry shrub or fruit tree if it performed poorly three years in a row while properly cared for

I culled a Actinidia argute because our region has late frosts very often that ruins the mini kiwis flowers, so after 3 fears of frozen flowers that was it for m (and that on top of waiting 4 years for it to mature and flower a first time (we had only one harvest of ca. 8 kiwis)

plants never die randomly

the crux or main point is to narrow down possible reasons or really identify it

like

water logged soil in winter

too little watering of newly planted stuff, overwatering newly planted stuff

details matter, it is sometime a subtle art to find the most likely cause but plant dont just die

I hardly ever have aphids on roses or berry shrubs or perennials, or so few that it is no problem

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I like snapping pics of my garden, try to pick a certain standpoint/ perspectiv so you can see changes in the season or after years,

so that helped me to spot that for instance Salvia nemorosa does not work in our region, it hates the loam, I got that confirmed at some speech/lecture by a Salvia specialist

it took me two sets of plants till I realised it, so now I stay away from those.

and you probably need to rethink your "perfect garden".

well organised helps

clearly defined edges helps

good tools, well maintained

and re-examining your own garden work, is your technique really fitting for the task at hand

a friend of mine had years of poor potatoe crops, turns out in her enthusiasm to go "all organic" she stuck to compost only and did not aplly enough, so her potatoe plants were actually starving, she herself told me that another garden neighbour could point that out to her or she noticed his practice (and so on)

To answer your question, with every season that I garden, I feel more and more calm and assured of what is to come. The garden is so strong - nature knows what it is doing; it is humankind that does not. I just look at it and am forever thankful that human beings aren’t in charge of the natural world and the systems put in place by it - though, of course we know the damage they can do to it. There are many points I’ve considered as I read through your posts, and I will touch in a few that come to mind. First off, sounds like you need a really good therapist - as do we all. It was really obvious the buildup of anxiety that you expressed. Indeed, there is much to be anxious in this world, and sometimes anxiety is not all bad, underlying the hopes and dreams we want to accomplish. But when it paralyzes us or eats away at us - this is the kind of anxiety we need to counteract. Secondly, I’m not sure if this helps you, but I personally look at perfection as something I can strive for, but will never achieve. This concept of perfection is grounded in humility - I am not perfect myself, so how could I possibly achieve perfection? But I can work towards things, learn from experiences that don’t go so well, and embrace the successes that do come along. And every now and then, please take a moment to step back and observe the humour of it all. There’s so much joy and laughs in our shared experiences!

I'm glad Heruga that you posted your concerns, I'm enjoying reading everyone's responses.

Wow lots more of helpful responses, thanks everyone. I have taken therapy before for my anxiety and depression and was once on pills for some years. Stopped taking them about the time when I first started my gardening journey because plants truly did make me happy and helped me overcome those issues. But that was before I owned my own property and garden, and I guess I started to realize the realities of maintaining your own garden and that it doesn’t come without challenges. I hope in a few decades I can be in the position to give advices like all of yours!