You should always take a second look at your ideas before gardening. This is to ensure the prevention of any major design or lifestyle catastrophes, before you create a garden.
Before You Create a Garden
When looking at some of your proposed ideas before gardening, we are not talking about how to design your garden or, what or where to plant. What we will discuss in this brief article is some of the more physical and material aspects you need to take into consideration before you create a garden.
Garden Design
Certainly, you should let your imagination run wild with how you want your garden to look. Even so, it is quite easy to go overboard with garden design and there are important questions that need to be answered, before you create a garden on the scale of something like your version of the botanical gardens.
In no particular order of importance:
Available Space
* Although it sounds fairly obvious, one of the biggest traps for new players is, making the grand design fit comfortably into the available area of the garden. Having an outdoor entertaining area is a great idea, everyone should have one.
However, if it means that half of the picnic table is a permanent fixture of the pond, this may suggest some problems with your spatial awareness. I kid you not, I have seen people fall in ponds, trample garden beds, you name it – all because the construction of the pergola was left until last, then forced into an inappropriate space.
Then you are stuck with having to hire a contractor to save the situation and, if you hired me, I would charge you double, just to teach you a lesson.
* If it has always been your dream to have a swimming pool in the back yard, then by all means do so. However, depending on the size of you yard, a pool may very well be the only thing in it.
Stepping out the back door may be hazardous, also. I have also seen that one before, except the problem was actually opening the back door.
* If all you have is a courtyard, or pocket garden – NO, you may not plant an oak tree, nor a sequoia.
Budget
* You may be able to afford the fountain, but can you afford the pumps, filters and electricity to run it?
* Are you going to get professionals in to do the work? Professional landscape contractors do not come cheap. Nor do laborers, for that matter.
* A garden full of rare exotics may sound, well, exotic, but plants are not cheap if you have to purchase them all yourself.
* Regardless of the size of your garden, you will need tools, dependable tools. Certainly you can buy your tools from the supermarket – if you are prepared to do so often. Do yourself a favor and buy “real tools”, stainless steel, not diecast.
Cheap watering cans are not sun-stable, they become brittle quickly. Generally speaking, it is only when the thing is full and you have lifted it, that it is going to break. It will then land on your toes. Water is heavy.
Same with hoses. Cheap hoses tend to crack and, are more prone to end up tangled. I can promise you, dragging around a hose that now resembles a bird’s nest, will quickly exhaust any perseverance you may have had.
Available Time
* How much time will you be able to afford toward the upkeep of the garden?
It would be mighty disappointing to create even the simplest of gardens, if you don’t have the time to look after it. Time constraints due to work commitments, or the family, must be considered.
* An entire garden made into a maze may very well be your dream, but who is going to trim it?
* Watering a garden takes time, if you are doing it by hand. Lush gardens will not survive the summer without adequate watering. If you habitually work late, an automated sprinkler system may be necessary.
* Vast expanses of lawn need mowing and vast amounts of water. Without having the time to properly maintain a lawn area, it very quickly starts to look like the tundra, or just ugly.
Physical Aptitude
* Are you physically able to look after a garden? If your age is under 35, great, you have energy to burn. As your age increases, so too, exponentially, does your desire to spend more time resting.
* If you have a dodgy back or knees, you are going to have to think of ways to lessen the discomfort. Maybe you will need special equipment for kneeling, or lessening the need to bend.
* Are you “tool dyslexic”. Charging off into the garden with a brace of tools you have never used before, could prove dangerous for the uninitiated.
So, before you create a garden, take a step back and think about what you are about to embark upon. Re-evaluating your ideas before gardening is a prudent idea, as this small task may, indeed, point out some glaring inconsistencies between what the garden dream is, and the actual reality.
