How to garden like a stone cold chiller

5 simple ways to stop FREAKING OUT about your garden

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Every day I pick a new album to play while I get our baby to sleep. Much to my husband’s chagrin, these albums tend to disproportionally feature the likes of Beyonce, Britney, various members of The Spice Girls and pretty much any other band who reached their apogee in the late 90’s or early 2000s (Beyonce not included of course; her peak is eternal). Today’s sleep soundtrack belongs to the philosopher Shaggy.

What’s that? You didn’t know that “Shaggy” Orville Richard Burrell is a philosopher? Nor did I, until I started playing his album Hot Shot and instantly decided he’s more than a lyrical genius, he’s a laid-back deep-thinker and we would probably all be a lot happier and more relaxed if we just conducted our daily affairs with Jamaican reggae playing as a backing track.

I’m not sure if it is now blatantly clear that I plan out these newsletters about as much as I plan out the design of my garden (read: not at all), but Hot Shot is pumping, my toes are twitching and I’ve decided today’s garden rant is gonna be one composed of pure, chilled out optimism.

Because really, who doesn’t want to just chill out and actually enjoy growing a boom boom bitchin’ garden?! I know I do.

Here are a bunch of ways to make gardening a tonne easier and significantly more relaxing.

Flanders poppies, fennel and a lettuce about to flower

Propagate what works

All the successful, plant-filled gardens I see have something in common: the people who grow them have adopted one key habit - when a plant grows well in their garden, they grow more of it.

Look around your garden now - what’s growing well? I’m sure there’s something.

In my more neglected garden spots, I know a few things always do really well - dogbane, fennel, hollyhocks, parsley, Flanders poppies, ribbon bush, nasturtiums and mustard greens, to name just a few. Once you’ve identified these heavy lifting plants that thrive easily in your garden, use them as your palette of backup plants - a way to guarantee that you never have big areas of your garden that are totally empty.

If your heavy lifting plants produce seeds, collect them and start spreading them through your garden. If they spread out at the base, divide them each year and dot them through your beds. If you can take cuttings, do that and make more.

The reason this habit makes your garden better (and helps you feel more relaxed) is it guarantees that most of your garden is filled most of the time with plants that generally do ok without too much mollycoddling. As a rule of thumb, it’s a good idea to make up about 80% of your garden with plants that thrive easily, and save the remaining 20% for your experiments. This ensures your garden is usually pretty full and looks nice, and helps keep your confidence up when those experiment plants that make up the 20% don’t always succeed.

The other reason this is a good habit is that it will help you create a more coherent-looking garden. Attractive gardens usually have some plant repetition, and propagating your reliable plants is a great way to achieve this.

Collect your seeds

Saving seeds from your own plants is the best way to instantly lower the pressure in your garden. When you have got literally thousands of seeds, you stop obsessing about making sure every single plant survives.

You get a whole lot more callous. It also gives you more opportunities to experiment and learn - you can sow a tonne of seeds across different seasons, in different sections of your garden, and the survival of any individual plant doesn’t matter too much. The way to achieve this desirable level of chill is to save seeds from any plant that does well in your patch and resow them the following season/year.

As a bonus, second generation plants that you grow from your own homegrown seeds tend to be better adapted to the specific environment of your garden and can often be tougher, happier plants.

Undervalue your packs of seeds

On the subject of seeds, I like to practice undervaluing the packs of seeds I buy. I say ‘practice’ because this one is still tough for me sometimes. I tend to impulse-buy seeds and then hoard them, putting off planting them because I haven’t got the garden ‘quite right’ yet.

The undeniable truth is that a $3 pack of seeds that you never ever sow is just $3 wasted. And it’s only three dollars. You can’t even get a coffee that cheap these days.

Here’s how I’m reframing it: if the seed pack is for flowers, legumes or any other plant that produces easy-to-harvest seeds, I remind myself that I only need one plant to grow successfully from each pack. That one plant will sufficiently restock the seeds I’ve sown, and will probably give me even more seeds. As soon as I have plenty of seeds, the pressure is off (per my previous point) and I can start flinging them wildly around.

Don’t sit on your seeds, just get them in and hope for the best. At worst, you’ve lost $3, at best, you’re about to collect more seeds than you could ever hope to sow next season.

You don’t *have* to remember what you’re growing

The next way I’ve chilled out is to accept that I will often - very often - not really know exactly what I’m growing. This has taken a heap of pressure off because I’ve given up labelling anything I plant.

As long as you don’t EAT plants that you’re unsure of, it really doesn’t matter if you don’t know what your ornamentals are with 100% certainty. I’m not advocating some form of gardening anti-intellectualism (which I’ve been accused of before), I’m just saying it isn’t going to break your garden if you don’t know whether you’re growing Californian Poppies “Jellybeans” or Californian Poppies “Apricot Chiffon”. What matters more is relaxing enough to sow the seeds in the first place.

Once your plants flower you can usually ID them anyway. I use the free app called ‘picture this’ and it successfully IDs most plants for me.

Basically, just don’t let perfectionism stop you growing stuff.

Took me three years to successfully ID this Chinese ground orchid; it bloomed just as beautifully when I had no idea what it was

Plant your bulbs - now!

Finally, and on the same note, if you haven’t planted your spring bulbs yet.. plant them now!! I often hear from people asking me if it’s too late, and to them I say: what do you have to lose?!

So, so often things in the garden turn out fine. Sure, spring bulbs are ‘supposed’ to be planted in autumn, but bulbs planted in winter will probably still grow, and if you leave them in your cupboard they definitely won’t.

Cut your losses, plant the bulbs. Pour yourself a wine, have a nice time.

And above all, in the words of another stone cold chiller: don’t worry, be happy.

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