Sauk County Gardener: Learning to love your imperfect garden
“The grass isn’t always greener on the other side!” ~Ricky Gervais
July is typically the month where I have a moment or two to catch my breath, sit back, and enjoy many of my summer blooms. Daylilies are one of my favorite flowers and right now my 200+ different daylilies are blooming. I just visited a stunning garden of one of my fellow master gardeners. She has taken a smaller in-town yard and turned it into a garden oasis with tons of ornamentals, herbs, and vegetables. I was in sensory heaven. After seeing her stunning garden, I have a hard time not seeing the weeds in my own garden that I haven’t had time to deal with yet. My goal was to have everything in my gardens trimmed, weeded and neatly edged before the end of the month.
I recently read an article entitled, How to Love Your Imperfect Home, and many of the points the author made pertained to gardening. Here’s a few things you can do to learn how to love, accept and enjoy your imperfect garden.
1. Stop comparing your garden to others. It’s really hard to do when you see everyone’s posts of their spectacular flowers blooming in their yards and or all the vegetables they are harvesting in their gardens. It’s also hard when you visit a beautifully maintained botanical garden where everything is placed just so. At this point, take the time to realize there is no perfect yard – and enjoy the one you have.
2. Focus on what is going well in your garden. Look at your garden with an eye that appreciates what is going on right in your garden. Your garden is always going have things you want to change or fix. Instead of focusing on what’s wrong in your garden, take the time to appreciate what is doing well and learn from it so you can replicate it in other parts of your garden.
3. Make a realistic, practical list of garden improvements. This doesn’t mean make a wish list; instead, consider the time and budget you have for your garden. I tend to take on multiple projects each summer and many times, they don’t all get done because I’m not great at accepting how much time each project takes. You don’t have to accomplish everything in one season, instead do what you can and be happy when you accomplish it.
4. Strive to cross one thing off the list each season. Getting started is many times the hardest step. Break your projects up into smaller steps and cross those steps off one at a time. That will help make those bigger projects much easier to accomplish when you measure your progress. For me, that means selecting one garden bed at a time to focus on doing major changes within it. I still have to do other garden maintenance (particularly in my vegetable garden) but major garden bed overhauls should only be done one at a time.
Step back and view your garden with fresh eyes and enjoy it. Then take a practical approach to what you want to change and go for it.
I do want to also share a tip I learned for helping deal with Japanese beetles. According to horticulture educator Tim Ripp, don’t mow your law any shorter than three inches. Japanese beetles like shorter, well-manicured grass as it is easier for them to lay eggs. I’ve always used Neem oil and hand-picking for control, but there are a couple of insecticides that have minimal impact on beneficial insects and other non-target organism. One is Chlorantraniliprole (the active ingredient in Acelepryn) and has been shown to provide 28 days of effective Japanese beetle. It can be used on trees, shrubs and herbaceous perennials. Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. galleriae or Btg is also a reduced risk insecticide. It can be found as the active ingredient in products such as beetleGONE!
Jeannie Manis is a Wisconsin-certified Sauk County Master Gardener volunteer. If you have any gardening questions, please contact the Extension Sauk County by emailing to tim.ripp@saukcountywi.gov or calling the University of Wisconsin Madison Division of Extension Sauk County office at 608-355-3250.
