You may know your garden but do you understand it?   You may know the plants names or not.  You see it often but are you sensitive to the signals it is sending you?   Do you experience it or merely pass through it?   Can you read your garden?

When I first visit a site I intuitively absorb the area.  It is important to do this without judging it.  This may mean visiting it at different times of day or projecting what its character will be in different seasons.  The best garden to understand is the one you live in.  Having a garden sensitizes you to your surroundings.  

Why is that?  To garden is to interact and observe the world about you.  For me to create gardens is to first understand the dynamics or pulse of a garden that I am envisioning and secondly to anticipate the experience of it.

It all starts with nature.  Before I became a gardener I was moved by the experience of living in an oak woodland in the East Bay hills overlooking Orinda.   After spending my college years in the Redwoods at U.C. Santa Cruz, I spent almost five years outside everyday as a gardener in England.  I became very sensitive to the flow of time and season.  Each area has its own local rhythms within a regional context.  This involves light, water, aspect, frost, wind, and neighbors.

When I returned to California from Europe I took over the native collections at U.C. Berkeley and started collecting and growing California native plants for the native gardens at U.C.  I was struck by how classical horticultural training gave me insight in seeing the natural plant world about me.  Plants are plants and nothing is standing still.  The reaction of plants is the same whether they are in a wild plant community or the garden.  Life is movement and change.  

A garden has a dynamic or pulse that is framed by its context but driven by its care or neglect.  Understanding plant growth is fundamental to seeing the world and sensing its pulse.

Are you in charge of your garden or is it in charge of you?  Does the garden succeed at a cost in time and treasure that gives joy and is not a burden?  If your garden does not nurture you in proportion to your efforts then it is time to regroup.

The following are things you can address which will give you more control and satisfaction from your garden.

1. Have your plantings reinforce your design intent

2. Prioritize your garden in terms of horticultural intensity

3. Select your plants well

4. Control growth of your plants

5. Use water carefully

6. Create fertile soil and fertilize judiciously

7. Manage your microclimates

8. Maintain a clean garden 

9. Mulch

10. Time your garden tasks to complement the seasons  

11. Remove the evidence—own it—admit it’s your fault at  move on.

12. Spend time in your garden