Welcome to your own private garden restaurant, Mother Nature’s Diner. You plan to order beautiful flowers to feast your eyes on, loamy soil that looks like chocolate cake mix, and the perfect amount of rain to wash it all down. For dessert, you’d like a few sweet song birds to listen to, dozens of pretty butterflies to amuse you, and a bonnet full of bees buzzing slowly from flower to flower. But Mother Nature is a sassy waitress in this private garden restaurant. She decides what you will … [Read more...] about Hortus sanus: Failure is on the menu at Mother Nature’s Diner
hortus sanus
Hortus sanus: Your gardening helicopter has been cleared for landing
Exteme close up inspection The tower has cleared you and your gardening helicopter for landing. Are you constantly checking to see which plants need more water, less water, more sun, less sun, more shade, less shade? Do you inspect your plants daily to figure out if they should be pruned, deadheaded, staked or shaped? Do you take a magnifying glass with you so you can see deep into the crevices of the bark of the trees? Is the local soil testing lab named in your honor because you have … [Read more...] about Hortus sanus: Your gardening helicopter has been cleared for landing
Hortus sanus: No Money? No Problem!
Ever feel like you are on the outside of the garden gate, looking in, wondering how you could ever possibly afford to have a nice garden, a healthy garden, hortus sanus? Many gardeners think they can buy their way into hortus sanus. Others despair that they don’t have a lot of money to spend on their gardens, so they’ll be forever in a statue of hortus insanus. But money doesn’t have all that much to do with hortus sanus. Experienced gardeners know this, new gardeners soon learn this. It … [Read more...] about Hortus sanus: No Money? No Problem!
Hortus sanus: Don’t ignore Mother Nature’s laws and rules
Symphyotrichum oblongifolium 'October Skies' The laws of nature can not be broken! You must learn to accept and abide by Mother Nature’s laws to achieve hortus sanus in your garden, or you will find yourself in a state of hortus insanus. You can’t make water flow uphill. You can’t specify the amount of rain and snow you want to fall on your garden. You can’t control the speed of the wind. You can’t plant a tropical rain forest in a zone 5b garden and expect it to overwinter outside. You … [Read more...] about Hortus sanus: Don’t ignore Mother Nature’s laws and rules
Hortus sanus: Chief Gardening Officer
Congratulations! You’ve worked hard to get to the top, you’ve paid your dues and sown your seeds and now you are the Chief Gardening Officer of your very own garden. You are in charge. You are the one who makes the final decisions. You decide which row to hoe, which weed to pull, which flower to plant. The buck stops, the fruit ripens, on your potting bench. You are now the one who is responsible for achieving hortus sanus, a healthy garden. It’s a lot of responsibility, but you’ve trained … [Read more...] about Hortus sanus: Chief Gardening Officer
Hortus sanus: The wilderness called and it wants your garden back
The wilderness on the edge of a Dallas garden. What was your garden before it was a garden? It was a wilderness. If you did nothing in your garden, the weeds, trees, bugs, grasses, animals, would just go wild. Like a teenager whose parents have left him alone while they go on an extended vacation, the wilderness will invite everything wild to come on in if there is no one at home to tend the garden. While wild works in some garden situations, few people look at a complete wilderness and … [Read more...] about Hortus sanus: The wilderness called and it wants your garden back
