I love looking at pictures of beautiful gardens.
You know the ones — perfectly edged beds, not a weed anywhere, flowers blooming exactly where they’re supposed to, and vegetables that apparently have never met a bug in their lives. 😂
They’re beautiful.
But I’ve realized something as I get older:
I don’t want a garden that becomes another full-time job.
I want a garden I can walk outside and enjoy.
I want to grow a few vegetables, putter around with my plants, move something because I think it would look better somewhere else, and sit down with my coffee when I’m tired.
Some things will grow beautifully.
Some things probably won’t.
There will be weeds. There will be bugs. And there will almost certainly be at least one plant I bought without having the slightest idea where I was going to put it. 😂
And I’m okay with that.
At this stage of my life, I’m much more interested in creating a garden that fits my life than creating a life that revolves around maintaining a perfect garden.
I Want My Garden Close Enough to Actually Use It
I’ve learned that convenience matters.
If I have to gather everything up, haul it across the property, and turn gardening into a major production every time I want to check on something, I’m probably not going to enjoy it nearly as much.
I like having plants close to the house. In fact, I’ve made it even easier by keeping several container planters right on my covered porch, which I wrote about in How I Made Gardening Easier After 60 With a Porch Container Garden.
I can step outside in the morning with my coffee, see what needs water, notice something new growing, pull a weed, or spend a few minutes messing with a plant simply because I feel like it.
Sometimes I might spend an hour out there.
Sometimes I might spend five minutes.
Either one counts.
I don’t want gardening to be another chore waiting for me on a list.
I want it to be something that draws me outside because I want to see what’s happening.
And honestly, the easier I make it to get to my garden, the more likely I am to actually enjoy taking care of it.
I Want to Grow Things I’ll Actually Use
I’ve also gotten more practical about what deserves space in my garden.
There’s no point in growing something just because everybody else grows it if I’m not going to eat it, cook with it, or enjoy having it around.
I’d rather have a few vegetables or herbs I’ll actually walk outside and pick than a huge garden full of things I’m trying to figure out what to do with.
And flowers count too.
Not everything has to earn its keep by becoming dinner. 😂
If something makes me smile when I walk outside, attracts butterflies, smells good, or simply makes the porch or yard prettier, that’s useful enough for me.
My garden doesn’t have to impress anybody. It just has to make me happy I planted it.
I’m Learning to Work With My Space
Every yard and garden has its own little personality.
Some areas get plenty of sun. Others stay shaded. One spot might dry out quickly while another seems to stay damp forever.
I used to think gardening meant finding the “right” place for everything and somehow creating the perfect setup.
Now I’m more interested in paying attention to what my space is already telling me.
If one side gets good morning sun, I can use that.
If another area gets the evening sun, I can use that too.
And if something clearly hates the spot where I put it?
Well, apparently we’re moving. 😂
I’m getting much more comfortable experimenting instead of expecting myself to get everything right the first time.
Gardening feels a lot more enjoyable when I treat it like something I’m learning rather than something I’m supposed to have mastered.
Some Things Are Going to Die — and That’s Okay 😂
If there’s one thing gardening will teach you, it’s humility.
You can water something, move it around, talk nicely to it, research what it wants, and that plant can still look you straight in the eye and decide it has no interest in living at your house. 😂
I used to feel like I had failed whenever a plant didn’t make it.
Now I look at it differently.
Sometimes I picked the wrong spot. Sometimes the weather didn’t cooperate. Sometimes bugs got there before I did. And sometimes I honestly have no idea what happened.
But every season teaches me something.
I learn what grows well for me, what needs more attention than I want to give it, and what I definitely won’t bother planting again.
A garden doesn’t have to have a 100-percent survival rate to be successful.
If I enjoyed growing it, learned something, ate a few things I grew myself, or simply spent more time outside because of it, I think the garden did its job.
The Garden Is Supposed to Be One of the Good Parts
I think that’s what I’m really trying to create now.
Not the biggest garden.
Not the prettiest garden.
Not a garden that looks like it belongs on the cover of a magazine.
Just a garden that adds something good to my day.
I want to step outside with my coffee and see what changed overnight.
I want the little excitement of spotting the first tomato, seeing a flower open, or realizing something I planted from a tiny seed is actually turning into food.
I want to putter around for a while when I feel like it and walk back inside when I’ve had enough.
And sometimes I want to sit there and enjoy everything without doing a single thing to it.
I’ve spent enough of my life with things that have to be done.
I don’t want my garden to become another one of them.
I want it to be one of the reasons I’m happy to have more time at home someday.
A little dirt. A little sunshine. Something growing.
And me standing there with my coffee thinking, “Well, look at that. It actually lived.” 😂🌱
That sounds like a pretty good garden to me.