When I had my first garden, Mom, an accomplished gardener, gave me some advice.
“Don’t waste your money on anything in the White Flower Farms Catalog. It won’t grow even if it says it grows in our Zone. Only plant the things you can find in every nursery in your area.”
The years since have taught me the wisdom of her words. White Flower Farms is still sending me catalogs, and I throw them directly in the trash.
If I had a child, I would pass on Mom’s wisdom, augmented with my own. While Mom said to plant only things I found in the local nurseries, I would limit that to only plants I see on my street, on my side of the street, with the same East / West exposures. Not just plant hardiness Zone 7, but Subdivision Tree Zone 7a, River Clay Zone 7a.iii.
Or weeds. Plant weeds. My Ajuga and Creeping Jenny look great.
3 responses to “Garden Advice for New Gardeners”
Yeeep. Look for the things that your neighbors can’t kill. Not the “amazing gardens” neighbors, but look at the things that are still flowering for the neighbors who work swing shift while also trying to keep teenagers alive and/or whose yards get overgrown before they get mowed. and plant those…
(but also, for every perennial: baby it for a year or two after it gets into the ground. There are a lot of things that can survive once they get established, but need to get their roots down into the water table and enough oomph to survive random chomping by insect hordes. But note that babying it involves watering it deep [so it works on getting those roots deep rather than thinking the surface is a fine place to stay].)
That said, we’ve discovered that we can’t kill dianthus (I mean, it’s a short-life perennial, so they die *eventually* but only after flowering 9+ months of the year for 4+ years). So that’s nice, to have some variety in the local plants, and as a bonus, they’re sold as annuals as cheaply as annuals. 🙂
But national gardening catalogs are a lie…
Ajuga a weed? Whole new concept, hard to get my head around. For me it’s always been a welcome ground cover. They do say a weed is just a plant in the wrong place.
KC – that explains why so much of my my dianthus died off last season.
Big Dot – common name: bugleweed. My grandmother came in to my mom’s garden once when Mom was out and “helped” her by pulling up all her bugleweed. I love it too.