My 2025 Gardening Motto

Short Version:

My 2025 gardening motto, perhaps my motto for all gardening going forward, is taken from The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

“Don’t let us make it tidy…It wouldn’t seem like a secret garden if it was tidy.”

Full Version:

While working in the garden or mowing or even cleaning inside, I’ve been listening to audiobooks and catching up on some children’s books I didn’t read when I was younger.

I knew the stories of these books, or at least bits and pieces of them, but I don’t recall ever reading them.

But I’m catching up!

Yesterday, I started listening to The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

We all know the story of Mary and the secret garden, but who among us has read the book? I think I knew the story from—I don’t know— osmosis? Being in the gardening world? Watching a movie adaptation? I’m not sure, but I don’t remember reading the entire book as a kid or even as an adult.

I did read Marta McDowell’s book, Unearthing the Secret Garden: The Plants and Places That Inspired Frances Hodgson Burnett so I know quite a bit about the author. I also once purchased a cheap copy of The Secret Garden, but it’s buried on a bookshelf somewhere.

Then yesterday, while listening to an audiobook version of The Secret Garden, just like that, I heard the main character Mary Lennox pronounce, yes, PRONOUNCE, what is to become my gardening motto for 2025.

“Don’t let us make it tidy,” said Mary anxiously. “It wouldn’t seem like a secret garden if it was tidy.“

Yes!

Don’t let us make it tidy!

Now, let’s discuss what this motto means.

It does not mean you can be lazy and slovenly and leave tools lying about, or not get around to planting newly purchased plants, or skip weeding. If you’ve read the book, you know that Mary and her friend Dicken Sowerby do work in the secret garden. But they don’t worry about the kind of tidy that some gardeners worry about.

(You know those gardeners. They edge and mulch, pinch and prune, stake and spray, and do everything in their power to make sure their gardens look like carefully arranged bouquets of plastic flowers. They tidy the very life and secrets out of their gardens!)

Truthfully, I think I’ve gardened by my new motto most of the time, anyway, and by doing so, I have uncovered many a secret that my garden has to share. A few examples…

Had I been all tidy about cleaning up leaves around—oh, I’m not going to be tricked into sharing exactly where—would those morel mushrooms have sprung up from the leaf debris? I think not.

If I had judiciously deadheaded all those columbines that bloom all over the garden in the spring, would they still self-sow all over the garden? I think not.

If I had refused to plant pawpaw trees because they like to send up sprouts to form a grove, would I have enjoyed tasting pawpaws last fall? I think not.

If I had pulled out the snapdragons and alyssum in early summer because they looked a little spent, would they have had a chance to come alive again as temperatures cooled in the fall, flowering once again? I think not.

I could go on with the list—I haven’t even mentioned the bees, birds, butterflies, and lightning bugs that prefer a bit of a messy garden, and the violets!—but I think you get the general idea. A tidy garden has no secrets!

But when you let a garden grow a bit into its messiness, you’ll discover new secrets daily. And that makes gardening that much more interesting and exciting and adventuresome!

Don’t let us make it tidy.

Do you have a gardening motto for 2025 or for all time? If not, feel free to make my new gardening motto your gardening motto for 2025 and beyond!