Dysfunctional Planner

I have a small garden, mostly in containers with some large shrubs and trees, my faux lawn ( inherited ) means that I can maintain it fairly easily but it still takes effort. Gardener extraordinaire Butter Wakefield suggests a healthy garden is maintained in ten minutes a day rather than hours at the weekend. This fits in nicely with my morning meditation of watering the garden, cutting back and dead heading any dried up plants and just general maintenance.

Honestly I am not doing this everyday, because of the hosepipe ban hanging over our heads I am trying to make the garden work a bit harder and only watering every other day. This makes sure that I don’t over water them, which could easily kill them. I take my gardening scissors outside and dead head any flowers that need it.

Gardening maintenance shouldn’t take too long, pulling out a few weeds, cutting back the sweet peas and dahlias to pop in a little vase. It’s like any chore, if you leave it to do once a week then it will take a lot longer. August is a busy time in the garden with so much in bloom. My rose has a bit of black spot so I am making sure to remove all the leaves, trying not to disturb the leaves too much so as not to spread the spores, this literally takes seconds.

I find it so meditative.

Sometimes I listen to music or a podcast and sometimes I just focus on my hands and what I am doing.

Our butterfly bush is a pretty pink, I don’t like it but the bugs do so it stays, it has a few dried flowers so I cut them off but a fair few of the leaves have curled back hosting something butterfly or moth related. I try and be mindful of the biodiversity in the garden. I want to encourage as much life as possible.

My Sweet-peas are not thriving. They look dry and haggard and last week had no flowers but they are still growing, they also have a lot of aphids on them so I am just letting them be. I have started collecting the seeds and next year I will grow my sweet peas on much higher teepees.

Gardening is all about learning, and just because something worked last year doesn’t mean it will this year.

That’s it, my ten minutes every other day maintaining the garden. It’s my morning meditation and getting outside for a purpose helps me get into the right headspace for rest of the day. It also makes me work out what I want to do next with the garden.

If you want to see Butter Wakefields wore click here

Here garden is written up in Home & Garden