Avoiding garden failures: Emotional decisions, garden passions and site assessment 101

Most of the garden failures that we as gardeners make come down to a lack of understanding of our gardens dynamics and a subsequent failure to pair the plants we buy with the locations we have for them. In the past, I have learned this the hard way from my own garden mishaps.

In my case, the mishap has generally begun on a sunny spring morning at my local nursery when I have fallen head over heels in love with beautiful little plants in pots. Even though I know full well that my garden is full, I have bought plants I don’t need.

Speaking to friends who work at nurseries, I believe this is a common situation for many people. So common that I have decided to write a series of blogs about the importance of undertaking site assessment prior to wandering into the nursery and coming home with a boot full of plants.

You need to be a bit kind to yourself, because If you were not passionate about plants you would not be a gardener in the first place. Your moments of garden passion are a wonderful part of your gardener DNA, but if you let these planting mistakes happen future garden misery awaits at the nursery.

The basic rule of all gardening is that all plants look can fantastic when they are thriving but very few look good when they are struggling. So it is absolutely key to use plants suited to the conditions on site.

So other than avoiding nurseries all together, which would be boring and sad, we need to take the steps we can to ensure that the plants we buy will work in the long term. Working with you. In the following series of blogs, I am going to share my knowledge of site assessment. Please join me in getting to know your garden better.