Last spring, I introduced my garden admiration service.
This spring, I’m going to teach you how to admire your own garden in five easy steps.
If you take my advice and do each step in order, you’ll be admiring your garden like a pro in no time at all.
Here are the five steps.
Step 1 – Provide seating.
Every garden needs a seat or two placed where a gardener can sit a spell and admire the garden. In this step, all you need to do is grab seating of some kind—a chair, a bench, even a big fat log—and put it in your garden somewhere that gives the sitter, you, a view of the garden. That’s it. Step 1. Provide seating.
Step 2 – Sit in your new garden seat.
This next step can be a bit tricky. You need to walk to the seating you’ve set up and actually sit in it.
The first time you do this, you may feel the need to get up right away to pull a weed or cut off a spent bloom.
Since you aren’t a pro at this, yet, that’s fine. Get up as needed and go do whatever you think has to be done. The important thing is that you sat in your new seat and looked at your garden.
Step 3 – Sit in your new garden seat with a beverage in hand.
To encourage you to spend more time sitting in your seat, take a beverage with you for Step 3. My personal preference is iced tea unless it is early in the morning or cool, and then I drink hot tea. Those are just suggestions. You can take whatever beverage suits you, even an alcoholic beverage if it is after 5:00 pm and you don’t have sharp gardening tools with you.
Now sit for at least five minutes, sipping your beverage. If you are quite new at admiring your garden, you’ll no doubt immediately see weeds, spent blooms, even plants in their nursery pots waiting to be planted.
You’ll want to cut short your admiring time to get to those plants. That’s why you have a beverage with you. Take a sip or two, breathe, and stay seated for at least five minutes. Then you can get up and start gardening again.
Step 4 – Repeat Step 3 but extend the amount of time you stay seated.
I recommend adding just a few extra minutes each day until you’ve worked up to 15, 20, or even 30 minutes of time just sitting and admiring your own garden.
Look around at the flowers, the ripening vegetables, the dabbled shade as though it isn’t your garden and you don’t know what needs to be done instead of just sitting.
Set a timer if you have to and stay seated until the timer goes off. After several sessions, each one a bit longer than the one before, you’ll be able to sit and admire your garden for longer periods of time without the need for a timer to force you to stay seated.
Step 5 – Add more seating to your garden in other areas.
Once you are able to sit for upwards of 30 minutes and admire your own garden, you are ready for the final step. Add more seating to your garden in other areas and use those seats to admire your garden from different perspectives. If necessary, repeat steps 2, 3, and 4 for each new seat.
Before you know it, by following these five steps, you’ll be a true professional at admiring your own garden. Other gardeners will envy you for your ability to sit and enjoy what you’ve planted. Of course, be kind to those other gardeners who aren’t admiring their own gardens as they should and share with them these five steps.
Then they, too, can learn to admire their own gardens, just like you admire yours.
I should try that! The seats out in the garden are the most neglected bits of all. The neighbor’s cat gets more use out of them than I do.
Come to think of it, I have sat out on the patio recently, but it was to repot some herbs. The potting table was too full of plants to use.
Good point, though. We enjoy gardening so much we forget to enjoy our own garden.
I only have seating at one end of my garden, I think I’m doing it wrong!
I loved your post! As a life-long gardener, I have always struggled with the concept! Not that I’m “older” and recovering from surgery I must take rest spells frequently and I have a strategy that is “sorta” working for me this year. I move my chair to a temporary spot that I’ve just finished weeding, and righting to order. Then I spend some time daydreaming about a garden vignette I could put there, or artwork, or….
Hi, Carole. It’s me Shirley Flanagan. I’m preparing our July issue of the Nature Place and love this blog entry about admiring your own garden by adding seating. May I add it to our issue giving you the credit and your blog site, please?