To quote Audrey Hepburn: “And the beauty of a woman only grows with passing years.” The same applies to a well-designed garden.
The garden is a living thing that develops and changes as it ages. Accepting this inevitable change, rather than seeing it as a negative to be prevented and controlled, leads to much less stress and strain on yourself and more time for enjoying life.
Gardens get better with age
We get smile lines from laughing and smiling our way through life. Some examples of a garden gracefully-aging include:
the moss that grows on rocks and stonework
the patina that develops on a rendered wall, terracotta pots and paving
timber that weathers grey
iron that rusts
leaves that drop and turn into mulch in garden beds
branches that hang overhead
lowers which turn into seed heads.
As a garden matures, it will also attract wildlife. This is to be expected and should be seen as a complement to your excellent gardening skills. Birds and lizards will eat slugs and snails, spiders catch flies, a balanced ecosystem makes for a healthy environment.
Building resilience into your garden
I never water my garden; I simply don’t have time and haven’t got around to installing a watering system. I have Japanese maples, silver birches, ferns and palms in my garden and it turns out they are growing quite successfully without any water, other than what falls from the sky. It's about selecting the right position for them, ensuring you have high-quality soil from the outset and not having weeds and grass competing with them for the moisture. Too often do I see people watering their garden only for us to receive good rain the following day.
Usually, if we experience a dry spell, a change in the weather is not too far away, and your garden will survive until then. The exception to this is newly planted gardens. Just as a child needs care and proper nutrition to develop into an independent, healthy adult, new plantings need the care to mature and develop robust root systems and resilience that will see them through the tough times. With age comes the power of endurance.
Work with Mother Nature, not against her
Everyone knows a manicured garden requires a lot of time to maintain. If you don’t have time for this, embrace the natural aging process of a garden, stress less about imperfections and embrace the changes nature brings.
Just as we face challenges in our lives that build wisdom and resilience, so does our garden. Mother Nature will win every time, so make things easier for yourself and give up on trying to fight her.
A garden faces hardship such as drought, storms, and floods; only the strongest gardens survive and may carry a few scars from that experience, but this process is called evolution.