9 Not So Secrets for A Great Garden

Scott Robinson

Updated on the 7th of April 2014

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A garden without the act of gardening is just a piece of dirt and it is the act of gardening that is so enjoyable. Gardens with nothing to do are plain boring and no garden is, or should ever be, finished. Part science, part art, part philosophy, gardening is without end and what we can achieve with and in our gardens is limited only by our imagination.

With this in mind I present to you 9 ideas, suggestions, concepts, but definitely not rules, to contemplate whilst enjoying this most humble of pursuits.

1. Money wont make your garden grow.
   Spending piles of hard earned cash won't give you a garden full of beautiful, healthy plants, it will buy you great paving, walls, statues, ornaments and a stack of empty pots from deceased purchases. Ten minutes research and a little understanding about a plants requirements will do more than a million dollars. Know your conditions and do your homework. There are many free sources of information, garden centres, nurseries, the local library and of course the internet. Find out what sort of habitat a plant is naturally found in, for cultivars and hybrids find out which species they were derived from. If a plant comes from dry, sunny hillsides in the Mediterranean it is unlikely to enjoy a damp, shady spot in clay soil.
   
   Also bear in mind that plants from the same genus may come from very different habitats and have radically different requirements. For example Salvia patens, a winter dormant, tuberous species, from Mexico, with a preference for a dry winter, plenty of summer water and light shade, will not prefer the same conditions as Salvia apiana, from relatively nearby California, a winter growing species that prefers full sun and summer drought.
2. Small plants are better.
   Young, healthy, actively growing plants establish faster than large flowering specimens, which are putting their resources towards flower production and seed set, rather than growing new roots. This is particularly true of fast growing tree species like Eucalyptus, seedlings within a few years dwarf those that were planted when more mature. They're also more wind resistant with their better developed root system.
   
   Get them planted as soon as possible too, most plants hate pots, especially over summer when their roots literally cook.
3. More is better.
   If one plant looks great then ten plants look better and a hundred extraordinary. This is the big secret of professional garden designers and is often the only difference between an award winning garden and an arbitrary collection of plants. Specimens are lovely but unless large, contribute little to the overall visual appeal of a garden. A good rule of thumb is that 80% of your garden should be composed from only 20% of the varieties of plants in it, with the remaining space providing additional interest and greater variety, upon further investigation.
   
   Keep it simple too, it's far easier to combine three or six plants together than thirty. If you need more interest then choose plants with similar foliage and/or growth habit as this will visually tie the garden together, it makes for easier maintenance as well. A bank of different Hosta varieties is far more appealing than one by itself.
4. Plant at the right time.
   The best time to plant is right before a plant starts growing new roots. Most plants have a distinct growing season, for cool season growers the best time to plant is autumn when the weather has cooled down, for warm season growers early spring is better.
   
   The soil and location will also make a difference. A lot of plants have trouble getting established in clay soils over winter, they are wet, cold and contain little air which roots need, better to plant when the soil is a little drier and warmer. Shady sites will suffer from the same malady, plants will establish much faster when the weather warms up a bit in late spring.
5. Potting mix is bad.
   Water is conducted to a plants roots through the soil via capillary action, for this to work the roots have to make intimate contact with the soil and any air pockets will interrupt the passage of water. Modern potting mixes are very coarse to provide as much air to the roots as possible, this works well in the contained environment of a pot, in the soil it interferes with capillary action. In clay soils it can also act as a sump for excess winter water, then dry out too rapidly in summer. In poorer sandy soils roots are often disinclined to leave the moister and more nutrient rich environment of the potting mix. The further and deeper plant roots can penetrate, the greater their access to water and nutrients, making for healthier, more drought resistant plants.
   
   Unless you know a plant resents root disturbance, tease out the root ball and remove as much potting mix as possible, without damaging the roots. Always remove coiling roots on trees and shrubs, they can strangle themselves as they grow and don't be afraid to do a little root pruning when planting, the plant will respond by growing new roots rather than relying on what it has. Some species will simply fail completely if not root pruned at planting time.
   
   When you prune back the roots always reduce the foliage by a corresponding amount, a good idea anyway, this reduces the demand on the root system for water. Of course starting with younger plants wouldn't require such treatment.
   
   Water fresh plantings in, really, really well. The first watering of a plant is possibly the most important, whether in the ground or in a pot. You need to water to the point of saturation, literally flood, this collapses any air pockets and re-establishes the capillaries between the plants roots and the soil. This is why tradition would have us stomp a plant in with our boot heel, to collapse the air pockets. While that extreme probably does more harm than good, compacted soil is just as bad, firming the soil down well with your hands is a good idea.
6. The best plants are free,
   or nearly so. Why waste money on potted annuals near the end of their lives or seedlings only a few weeks old when a packet of seeds, better yet, seeds from a friend, are a lot cheaper and grow a lot better. There is an incredible wealth of annuals and biennials available as seed, many more than you will ever find available in punnets. Grow them once and collect you own seed for next year, many hybrids won't grow true to type so choose wild species or heirloom varieties.
   
   Self seeders are even better because they grow themselves, not only do they add whimsy and charm, but they often help hold a garden together at those odd times of the year when little is happening. Seedlings can be transplanted from areas where they're not wanted to somewhere more convenient, but do it as soon as possible, most annuals and biennials are only capable of establishing new roots when young.
   
   Perennials are often no harder to grow from seed than annuals but they generally will not flower until their second year and often won't be mature for several more after that. Fortunately many can be dug and divided every few years, are better for it and will form mature clumps the first season, this is one reason why they are the staple of the English border.
   
   It's probably cheaper, though less rewarding, to buy trees and shrubs, than to propagate them yourself. While they're often easy enough to germinate or root by cutting, it may take many years for them to reach flowering size. How much do you value the time spent watering, re-potting, pruning, feeding and weeding for three years? six years? ten years?
7. Light is food.
   I've seen more gardens fail to meet expectations because of this one simple factor than for any other reason. We live in a region that enjoys the long hot summers typical of a Mediterranean climate, and naturally we cope by providing for ourselves lots of shade. Good for us, not so good for plants, as sunlight is their source of energy and flowers require a lot of energy to produce. Plants that are adapted to growing in shade tend to have larger, darker leaves to capture as much light as possible, they also tend to produce far fewer flowers for the amount of leaf area than sun loving plants can produce. Plants from areas with very intense light tend to have a smaller leaf area and can even produce more flowers than leaves.
   
   Most of our garden plants have been selected for their floral displays and so most of them naturally come from sunny areas. By growing a plant that requires full sun in the shade you are effectively starving it, sometimes to death. Not only will it not flower well, if at all, it will be sparser, tend more to flop and be more pest and disease prone due to it's weakened state. If a plant comes from a cooler climate and requires sun, yet finds it too hot in our summer, choose a more appropriate plant.
   
   You also need to take into account the passage of the sun through the seasons. The south side of your house, while sunny and baking in the summer and the ideal home for Mediterranean plants like lavender, rosemary and bearded iris, will be completely unsuitable in winter, cold, damp shade, with shorter daylight hours. Many shade plants though will grow quite happily in the full sun during winter.
   
   Over the years I have had many complaints over so called drought hardy plants not being able to handle the hot sun, Achillea, Rudbeckia, Stachys to name but a few. Invariably they have all been given shade for a portion of the day, from a house, fence or larger plant. Plants do try to adapt but the difference between full sun and solid shade is too extreme for some, usually the most sun loving and drought hardy, and each day no matter how much they are watered, they simply wilt when the sun hits them, with leaves too big and soft to handle the intense heat. The same plants moved to somewhere more exposed and hotter are perfectly at home with no water at all over summer. When choosing plants for partly sunny locations it is generally the plants that would prefer a little more shade than sun that do the best. For most of the year they will be quite content and a few scorched leaves over the middle of summer are easily removed in the autumn.
8. Am I a snail farmer?
   As gardeners we invest a lot of time and effort into growing healthy plants. Snails and slugs eat plants, a fact I hope most of us know but which more often than not is grossly underestimated. Apart from the visibly obvious damage snails and slugs cause, they also do a lot more damage that is easily overlooked.
   
   New shoots of perennials and bulbs as they emerge from the soil are a favourite, they can get eaten off to well below ground level overnight, us gardeners never see them and assume the plant died while it was dormant. They get even more devious when they eat the delicious new shoots of shrubs and trees (I've seen them eat large Frangipanis and the fruit off Citrus) and leave the mature growth alone, the plant looks fine but without the ability to make new growth it faces a slow demise. Orchids face a similar fate with their root tips under constant predation, they manage to hang on with their existing roots for a few years. Many flowers are considered a delicacy while the plant itself is untouched (I've grown many "non-flowering" Verbena and Viola). While babies aren't able to tackle a whole leaf, they will happily eat the soft membrane from the leaf's underside, visible only upon close inspection, that is until the leaf starts slowly dying, at which point the cause usually remains a mystery (Dianthus are a favourite for this kind of attack).
   
   The absolute favourite food though, for snails and slugs, is seedlings, the younger the better. How many just germinated seedlings a large snail can eat in one night, before the gardener even knows they existed, I can only guess at but would easily be several hundred small seedlings (poppies or Verbascum). Apart from mulch, this would have to be the number one cause of self seeders failing to live up to their reputation.
   
   As I value highly my seedlings, I take a zero tolerance approach. Snails are active only when conditions are cool and moist, they hibernate during summer, so I bait the entire nursery several times from the first rain (the start of breeding season) until late spring or early summer (when they're trying to fatten up for their summer rest) depending on rainfall. There are Iron based pellets now available which I find most effective, are unlikely to be lethal to animals and feed your plants a small dose of Iron. Beer traps can work well if used in quantity through the entire garden. Copper tape is an effective and long lasting barrier for plants in pots. Egg shells, oak leaves and coffee grinds can also protect your plants but need constant replacement. Snail harvesting with torch in hand, can be an enjoyable pastime but can only be moderately effective when taken up as a form of religion, practised nightly over the cooler months. Though even devout followers don't make an impact upon juvenile snails and slugs too small to notice.
   
   Of course you can just live with these annoying pests by planting unpalatable plants or enjoying your garden only in summer like many snail farmers (a travesty in our Mediterranean climate).
9. Gardeners don't grow plants.
   We are not gods, we do not make plants grow, it is their nature to grow, flower and seed, they do it all over the world with no help from us. As gardeners all we can do is provide them with the conditions they require, to grow as we wish them to. Gardening is not hard, we have been doing it for thousands of years, the cultivation of plants is a basic human skill. Give them light, water and nutrients in appropriate amounts and they will grow, sometimes despite our best efforts to prevent them. If a plant fails, perhaps it was a dud or diseased but more likely it was because the plant was a poor choice for the conditions. There are no bad plants, just bad plant choices.