Some quick tips to make your garden substantially more impressive

Have guests over? Have you talked up your gardening prowess? These reframes will help you to make even the biggest of failures something to celebrate

Wellingtonians will know why I don’t have much for you this week. I have hardly gotten any work in, on Thursday lovely Judith apologised profusely and suggested I go home early while I took shelter underneath a tree… (it has rained, and blown, and rained again, all week). On the upside, I have been drinking a lot of tea out of this mug my sister in law got us-

From The Welly Collective, if you are interested!

Also- Twiglands, a beloved plant shop to many, has announced that it is closing its doors. So do pop in and get a bargain, say goodbye. I am sad about that one!

Anyway, here are some great ways to make it sound like you are really super on top of your gardening, in case someone has come by and seen a bit of mayhem.

“I leave those for microgreens”

Did you try to grow broccoli this year? Did it go straight to seed? Is it covered in aphids, caterpillars, miserable, dying, but your hope is that it will somehow grow back and turn into something Instagram-worthy?

Don’t you worry. What you are actually doing is leaving those failed brassica heads until they shoot up into the sky and create long, hard pods, which dry out and are filled with hard, round, black seeds.

You are going to collect all of those seeds, discarding the pods, and use them to grow microgreens.

Pros: Microgreens are a nutrient powerhouse, and they only take a few weeks to grow. They will not fail, unless you let them dry out.

Cons: You are unlikely to ever achieve this. How many of us, hands on our hearts, grow and consume microgreens. Your guests don’t know that, though. You are well on your way to being a wellbeing influencer.

“I grow/leave Roses for the Rosehips”

Whaaat? You didn’t deadhead your roses? Your roses had all of the petals blown off in the wind? They look really ratty?

Nah, you planned for this. You like the rosehips (remainder of the rose, which goes red, and looks nice in Winter). You actually pay a lot of attention to your roses, but your key focus is the rosehips. And you don’t really bother with flowers anyway. They are just for the pollinators.

Pros: You should probably actually leave the last flush of flowers to be rose hips, because they are genuinely beautiful.

Cons: Don’t be fooled by recipes involving rose hips. Rose hips are rock hard, and filled with tiny 2mm long fibers, which will stick to your hands, mouth, throat and are extremely itchy. If you are to use rose hips in any sort of cooking or skincare, you need to cut them in half to get the goodness (use secateurs, because they are too hard for knives generally), and strain the living heck out of them, because you don’t want those little fibres anywhere near yourself.

“That was a bit of an experiment”

The best response to anyone querying a Plant Situation. Maybe a plant of the same type grew in one spot previously, and you have planted a full-sun plant in full-shade, or a damp-loving plant in bone dry sand. Maybe a plant is in a weird spot but thriving. “oh gosh, yes, it’s just a bit of an experiment… it has died and come back once before so I figured I would leave it there a bit longer.”

Pros: You have already done it, and the plant is dead, and someone is looking at this sad sad situation. If they point out it is really fully dead you can laugh casually and pull it out then and there, together, because you are an Organised Person who definitely didn’t leave that plant, dead, there for months. But you have learned a lot. Seasoned gardeners are annoyed at their failures and knowingly plant things in silly places sometimes. Don’t sweat it, one failure does not create a failed garden.

Cons: Sometimes the Plant Problem is a plant growing in the wrong place, and you are afraid to move it, and if you think about it more you may start spiralling. This is why I have a lemon tree inexplicably hanging over a retaining wall.

That’s a skink/weta/cat habitat!

Have an overgrown part of the garden, or a big pile of green waste that you were definitely going to bag up and take away (four months ago)? Why not tell people that you spotted a valuable, exciting creature enjoying the space!

Pros: It is actually pretty good for bugs and animals alike to have a couple of overgrown, debris filled corners of your garden.

Cons: No cons. You are doing great and I will fight anyone who tells you that you should be more energetic and organised.

“I leave those for the birds”

My favourite power move of all time. How do you net your plums? Oh, I leave them for the birds. Your apples are full of holes! Oh, I leave them for the birds. Your cherry trees are all ringbarked and damaged from the Kaka. You chose for that to happen.

The thing I like the most about this is that if you do take on this super-chill perspective, everything becomes easier. Net the part of your tree that you can reach. Expect for some of your plants to be damaged outside of your control. Accept the to-be-expected.

Pros: Life is so much easier

Cons: This is a good perspective if you still receive some benefit from the things that the birds are destroying!

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I hope that this gardening advice was helpful to you all, and that you can look outside, nod knowingly, and reassure everyone around you that you are extremely successful. Have a good week everyone!