My Top 5 {Guilt-free} Gardening Tips

Let me introduce you to my gardening philosophies:

• I don’t strive for the “Most Beautiful Yard on the Island” award.  However,  I do want passers-by to recognize our place is inhabited by people who care.
• I love flowers and love to be surrounded by happy color.
• Low maintenance and budget friendly are a must.

If you share similar desires, perhaps some of these tips can be helpful:

1.  Start weeding early in the planting season.  If I don’t try to get most of those weeds taken care of when they’re “babies”, I’m sunk!   I try to implement the magic duo whenever possible ~ landscape fabric placed over a weed free area with a thick layer of  bark mulch on top.

 

The fabric in no way prevents all weeds from growing, but it sure helps.  And the bark mulch?  I call it black gold.  It not only keeps the moisture in, it looks nice, too!

2.  Give your plants good nutrition.  They need food along with water – just like humans do – to grow healthy and strong.  If the leaves are starting to turn yellow, they’re probably hungry for something.

 

3.  Understand what ground cover is before you plant it.  Ground cover are plants that grow and spread easily.  They will form a “carpet” of plants in your flower beds.  They are wonderful if you like that look.

However, if you’d like to achieve a neater, more ordered style of flower bed (like me), ground cover will be a continual source of frustration for you.  I avoid them like the plague and consider them weeds… {Just my opinion, of course!}

4.  Work smart and think of your muscles as you work.  I have a muscle pain issue {fibromyalgia} that can flare up after gardening {almost as bad as the time I tried to take up jogging!}.  My strategy?  Avoid bending at the waist (kneel or sit while digging and weeding), take short frequent breaks, get help for the heavy stuff, & drink lots of water.  Most importantly, listen to the pain and stop before it’s screaming at you… {and make sure the Advil is handy!}

5.   Set boundaries that work for you…then free yourself from feeling guilty! If your idea of gardening is a small pot of plants by your back door, that is just fine.  In fact, if your “gardening” of preference is veggies and cut flowers from the store, that’s fine too!!

Let me give you my example:

Over here on the West Coast things grow quite easily.  I also found a lot of “peer” pressure to be a gardener extraordinaire.  I did my time planting veggie gardens and makeshift greenhouses.  But reality forced me to make some big decisions gardening-wise…

See that big plot of lawn in the front yard?

It used to be a huge, whoppin’ garden.  In fact, I’m probably the first woman in 100 years that has lived in this house that hasn’t tended to a veggie garden.

It was humbling for me to have to have it grassed in.

It was also a relief.

I’m so happy that I have 2 flower beds all nice and pretty.  The truth is, I have 4 more {huge ones} that look like this:

 

I’ll try to get to them little by little.  However, past experience has taught me that flowers are brave enough to bloom amid the weeds.

And with a little snip of my scissors and a  cup of water, they look just beautiful on my window sill…

And {thankfully}, it’s weed free there.

Linking up:  Southern Lovely, Here Comes the Sun, Home Stories A-Z