Do you open your garden for charity? Or do you have an event like a wedding or a party for which you want your garden to look its best? Or maybe you're about to put your house on the market?
We have 10 days to go until our Open Garden weekend when seven gardens in the four villages along the shore open to the paying public.
Is it stressful? Well the idea that people are actually going to pay to look at our gardens is certainly a big incentive to have them looking good! What if they don't like it? What if....that little critical voice in the head goes into overdrive....However though we've been working on ours for months, we are running out of time to make any big changes (illness and a bereavement have found us behind) and I am looking at it today and getting real about what we can hope to achieve.
So here are four tips for getting a great looking garden in a limited time:
Get real about what can be done
Identify key points
Keep the toes shiny
Make the good bits really good
TIP ONE
Get real about what can be done, accept that some things cannot be done.
It's too late to move large plants - they would just flop and not have time to recover. I can't make grass seed germinate any faster so....Some of my favourite effects will be over, some won't yet have come into flower. Apart from a little liquid feeding to try to bring some things on, there's nothing that can be done about these - let them go. I'm probably not going to get the wall painted, or that handrail, the path might not get power-hosed....
In other words IT WON'T BE PERFECT.
Accepting this, I relax and focus on the things I can realistically do.
tomorrow: Identify Key Points
We have 10 days to go until our Open Garden weekend when seven gardens in the four villages along the shore open to the paying public.
Is it stressful? Well the idea that people are actually going to pay to look at our gardens is certainly a big incentive to have them looking good! What if they don't like it? What if....that little critical voice in the head goes into overdrive....However though we've been working on ours for months, we are running out of time to make any big changes (illness and a bereavement have found us behind) and I am looking at it today and getting real about what we can hope to achieve.
So here are four tips for getting a great looking garden in a limited time:
Get real about what can be done
Identify key points
Keep the toes shiny
Make the good bits really good
TIP ONE
Get real about what can be done, accept that some things cannot be done.
It's too late to move large plants - they would just flop and not have time to recover. I can't make grass seed germinate any faster so....Some of my favourite effects will be over, some won't yet have come into flower. Apart from a little liquid feeding to try to bring some things on, there's nothing that can be done about these - let them go. I'm probably not going to get the wall painted, or that handrail, the path might not get power-hosed....
In other words IT WON'T BE PERFECT.
Accepting this, I relax and focus on the things I can realistically do.
tomorrow: Identify Key Points
After a hard day in the garden it's worth the effort to set a nice table for dinner - you feel treated..
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