Southern Gardeners ~ gardening locally, sharing globally

One of the challenges any gardener faces is how to adequately utilize their garden space. Whether the space that you have allotted to you is a small plot or a vast canvas, it is oftentimes a chore trying to constantly improve and make it visually pleasing.

There are some tried and true methods that you can employ to get your paradise-in-progress on the right track:

Take a leisurely drive around your neighborhood. If you find your immediate area uninspiring, take an informational drive through an area that you’ve long admired for their creativity and let that provide the impetus for your next project. There are always certain elements that you can borrow from others…as long as you make it your own!

Take cues from the various garden publications. Popular gardening magazines like Better Homes & Gardens, Garden Gate magazine and Backyard Living offer not only step by step directions on how to create your ideal garden, but offer beautiful pictures to illustrate the point. Give into your senses and begin to devise plans using a sketchpad or graph paper to plot out your landscape. It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate or fancy, just something that you can provide a blueprint of your future plans. I’ve created an inspiration book using clippings from my favorite gardening magazines that I search through when I’m feeling particularly uninspired.

Surround yourself with other people who like to play in the dirt. When you visit your local nurseries and garden centers strike up a friendly conversation with others who share your love of gardening. You will be surprised at how much knowledge fellow gardeners are willing to share with you. That is the one common thread….we love to brag about what plants are doing well in our gardens and we especially love to give problem solving advice.

Join virtual communities like this site, where you can meet with other gardeners. Many will take great pride in showing pictorial evidence of their green thumbs, offering answers to specific questions, or just being a sounding board when you experience the inevitable travails of landscaping. Even doing a google image search on ‘flowers’, ‘shrubs’ or ‘trees’ will provide beautiful selections for even the most novice gardener.

Survey your own garden. I find that just a simple walk around my yard provides a great opportunity to assess how well or conversely how poorly I am doing when it comes to meeting my stated goals. This is a good time to see how everything flows, to identify what element is contrary to what you are trying to achieve or to determine what looks unfinished or out of place. Sometimes, the best ideas come to me as I am weeding my flower beds.

Watch garden related television shows like Gardening by the Yard, Desperate Landscapes, and Gardener’s Diary on the Home and Garden Television channel (HGTV) or Weekend Gardening or DIY gardening on the DIY Network channel. These experts provide great insight as to how you can not only improve your yard, but teach you how to take care of it with step by step instructions.

Lastly, as an extension of the previous tip, visit the associated gardening websites where you can get detailed information (that you can easily print out) about the projects discussed on television. Remembering to open your mind and allow the free flow of ideas to permeate your senses will be the first step to realizing the garden paradise of your dreams! Good luck!

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