Maureen's Garden Path

Having a vision helps formulate a plan and purpose for your garden and is the first step in creating a relationship with the land. 

A garden is a four-season event. Spring is about awakening and new beginnings. Summertime explodes in beauty and scent. Autumn is for harvesting your labors and putting the garden to bed. Winter is the time to dream and plan for next year’s garden.

Both landscaping and gardening involve design, planning and maintenance, but only the gardener will actually plant, weed, cultivate, and harvest. Gardening is an ongoing activity because gardens require tending and specialized care throughout the year and over a long period of time.  

Every season has something to offer in the continuity of life. Memories are not created in a vacuum. Our life experiences provide only the narrative, while our living world delivers the backdrop of colors, images, smells, and sounds.   

A garden is a magic carpet that carries your heart along on a personal journey with Mother Nature.   

With your first dig of the shovel, earth’s scent will envelope you, birdsong will entertain you, sunshine will warm you, and wonderous surprises await your heart. 

Having the right gardening tools for the job is as important as picking the seeds or plants you want to grow. The tools you will need depend upon the scope of your endeavor. If you’re creating a container garden, you may only need a hand trowel, a pail to manage potting soil, and a watering can. A large in-ground space will require much more. 

Both landscaping and gardening involve design, planning and maintenance, but only the gardener will actually plant, weed, cultivate, and harvest. Gardening is an ongoing activity because gardens require tending and specialized care throughout the year and over a long period of time.  

To live with a garden is to have your heart so devoted to its well-being that it becomes part of your very essence. Then you, too, will bloom. 

Gardening connects us with nature and makes us feel that we are part of something capable of creating sunsets and snowstorms, butterflies and fireflies, birdsong and wind gusts. 

Gardeners should think of themselves as guardians of the land they inhabit and embrace its uniqueness in contour, composition, and personality. The gardens we nurture are just as alive as the gardener. Myriads of teeming creatures exist above and beneath the surface, creating an environment that challenges and welcomes us into its complex and wondrous world as a cocreator with Mother Nature.