A bed of orange hippeastrums in bloom is a cheerful sight.

Most people, when planning their gardens, think that once they decide how they want to design their gardens and implement that “master plan”, the only thing left to do is maintain the plants. What we tend to forget is, plants respond to nature. They may have a growing habit we’re not aware of, or they may not thrive in the conditions they’re put in, etc., and break the design. On the other hand, we ourselves may change our minds about our gardens, and adapt things.

I love the ornamental look of the roselle plant, but it tends to attract mealybugs…

When I began to get interested in gardening perhaps 15 years ago, I wanted to “beautify” the garden with ornamental plants. This meant lots of purchases from the plant nursery and passalong plants from other gardeners, but was in the end satisfying to me, because of all the colourful plants everywhere. It was also a lot of work to maintain, but I was content as I worked my way up along the learning curve.

Fast forward to the present day, and things have changed. I’ve evolved the garden to include edible plants, and after a few years of this, I’ve definitely learned a few lessons. I know what can and will not willingly grow – and more importantly, HOW they grow. I also have a better idea of what not to grow because they attract irritating things like mealybugs and white flies. On the flip side, I also understand how to create conditions to attract certain creatures.

This is not to say that I know everything yet. I don’t. What I do have is a better vision of what I’d like our garden to be like. I want it to be productive and beautiful. I want to make it welcoming to nature’s creatures, because we need them to have a balanced ecosystem. I want to grow as much produce possible because I detest having to buy what we can grow, and it’s the best feeling eating really fresh fruits and vegetables – and you can’t get any fresher than getting them straight out of your own garden. Just a couple of days ago, we had some long beans that had been harvested about an hour before the meal – they were the sweetest tasting beans ever, and I love that our family gets to enjoy that freshness.

Sunbirds are among the daily feathered visitors to our garden.

Well, now that it’s the middle of the year, gardeners all over the world are happily getting their plots going. I know because of all the blogs and vlogs online. It’s a lot of fun to see how others are working on their gardens, and it also inspires me. I mean, as a person who gets excited just seeing seeds germinate and grow into productive plants, observing how others plant out their gardens is a whole lot of inspiration! I know that I’ve been saying that I’m going to do this and plant that over the last few weeks, but life caught up with me again and I’ve crashed out with an irritating flu bug that really drained me. However, the time spent recuperating has been good, giving me time to relax my mind and think things over. Let’s just say that there are more plans afoot, and that with some help, the garden will be going through the next step of evolution.

It’s been about 5 years since we tried growing tomatoes. I stopped because they tended to attract whiteflies, but I’m wondering if it’s time to try again…

Who knows how long the new ideas will last? Not me, because as I said, plants tend to do things their way, and we have to see how to roll with the changes. It’s just fun trying new things.

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