A Paradise of Your Own

Right now my garden is soupy mud, intermittently frozen. But in my mind, it's already blooming.

Our garden daydreams are not idle. They give us vision. They can be help us see past our assumptions to our actual priorities. Consider this story:

My sister taught for many years at a small elementary school. Several years ago, the parents and teachers decided that a school garden would be a good thing, and they got together to plan it.

I wasn't optimistic. I'd seen several school garden projects that failed. The parents and teachers--or sometimes a non-profit group--had planned and planted a garden, expecting the kids to revel in eating the food and being out in nature. Instead, the kids viewed it as yet another chore foisted on them by the grown-ups, and the garden soon became a weedy wasteland. Often the food plants weren't ready to harvest until the kids were gone for the summer.

At my sister's school, things started to unfold in the usual way. They started to get donations and labor for the big garden project. "What food shall we grow?" people at the meeting said. "How shall we lay it out?"

But this time, the teachers took a different tack. They didn't want the grown-ups to have all the fun of planning and the kids just get stuck with the weeding. They realized how much learning would take place in the process of figuring out the garden. So they asked the kids to draw the garden as they imagined it would be.

In the kid's drawings there were no radishes. There weren't even tomatoes, and hardly any corn. There were big sunflowers, and a circus of colorful flowers, with butterflies, frogs, and worms. So the teachers and the kids learned about pollinators and butterflies, and they planned a butterfly garden. The donations and labor made the kid's plan come true. And it's still thriving (and a circus of colors)  many years later.

This story says a lot about where to start with planning.  And not just with a planning a new project, but with established gardens as well. Your first and biggest step is clarity. Clarity about what you really need, what you really want, and what doesn't work for you right now. Our needs and wants change. Sometimes our assumptions don't.

Here are three suggestions:

1. Like the kids in the story, imagine what would be paradise for you. Then refine that down to three specific things you could plant or build or set aside to make the paradise you saw. Maybe a sitting area under a tree, bright flowers and herbs near the house, and year-round salad. Or, in a different situation, maybe a more productive workflow for your market garden, an outdoor shower, and more compost.
2. Make a list of what did not work, was irritating, or ugly or tedious in your yard. How can you fix it? My neighbor just made the hard decision to cut down old fruit trees that aren't productive, and are blocking his view. He'll plant different types in a better spot. You might need better tool storage, more privacy, better weed control, or a different watering set-up. Maybe you need to move your garbage cans or get some shade over your patio. Maybe you need corn for 2 months instead of 2 weeks. Maybe you just need less zucchini.
3. Make a rough map of your yard--all the land under your control. It doesn't have to look like a map, it could just be blobs that stand for places. Don't forget easily-overlooked places, like maybe that dark strip between the garage and the fence, or the shrubs under the windows in front, or that tight corner or rocky slope. How could some of those spots help you with your priorities or solve your problems? I've written HERE about how to use those less-obvious spots.