Gardening: why bother?

Because the whole point is to enjoy your garden.

Every day, rain or shine, a local dog walker passes our house multiple time. If we happen to be in the front garden as she passes, she ALWAYS says the same thing to us and I mean ALWAYS. Every day.  “How do you keep it looking so lovely?” To which Kate replies, “effort.” With a mumble about I just don’t have that type of free time, she toddles off, until tomorrow.

I think this conversation hits the nail on the head about the difference between people who garden and people who only dream of having a nice garden. The difference is, there is a hell of a lot of effort goes into maintaining a garden that has lawns and flowerbeds etc. But let’s be honest, some of us actually enjoy that work, that effort. It’s calming, lets you get out of your head space and relax, forget about work or other worries and just chill. Others can see how much they could enjoy the finished product, but don’t want to or aren’t able to put that time and effort in.

Let’s not forget though, the purpose of all that effort is to enjoy your garden and that’s the important point I want to talk about today.  Gardens are just the outdoor space with your house. For us, the garden is an outdoor dining area, a sunny reading nook, and a socialising space.  For some people the garden is a play area for the kids and for some hideous people who should be ashamed of themselves, it’s a car park (mutter mutter). No matter what the purpose of your garden, a little bit of work is usually required to maintain it for that use. It might be as little as cutting the lawn occasionally or it might be full on flowers, borders, shrubs, and beds.  But it’s the point when you can enjoy your garden that everything becomes worthwhile. For us, it’s the quiet, sitting in our back garden enjoying the colours of all the flowers. We like it to be tidy because we can’t relax in clutter or mess, so all that effort means we can relax and just have some chill time. It’s also nice to know you can walk about barefoot and not worry about standing on anything that shouldn’t be there because we keep on top of it. Best of all though is when we have friends over and the garden becomes our outdoor dining area. the BBQ is going, drinks are flowing and everyone can enjoy the garden.