Becoming a better gardener

I'm thinking again about what you really need to know to become a better gardener (and maybe what I mean is a good garden steward). I love learning more about plants and gardening (that's what makes it fun) and the images with Thomas Jefferson's quote at the end of my wildlife gardening talks reflect that (hmm, notice the rabbit!)


I mused about this some months ago, largely because one of our local extension offices was offering a class for the public on 'home horticulture' that was a less-intensive version of our SC Master Gardener program.

But I had a significant 'stirring-the-pot' experience this morning looking over Ann Lovejoy's excellent book 'Organic Garden Design School' -- she wonderfully describes what my gardening companion and I have bumbled into doing in our formerly large grassy expanse.

We've created our garden landscape not from a horticultural perspective but an ecological one, and our garden landscape has been inspired by admiration of natural landscapes and a keen interest in mimicking their best attributes. Lovejoy writes about creating successful gardens by understanding what thrives there (a mix of natives and well-adapted non-natives), and not trying to grow plants that won't. There's a significant European gardening trend to mimic natural landscapes (from all over the world) to create sustainable garden designs. A fabulous city garden landscape (the Lurie Garden) in Chicago was envisioned by a Dutch garden designer (Piet Oudolf) based on North American prairie landscapes.

So, what we know about plant life histories, reproductive strategies, plant adaptations, pollinator behavior, native plant communities, as well as all sorts of stuff about botany in general (from many years of study) has actually been the underpinning to a home garden that pleases us a great deal.

So, I'm trying to think again about what is it that someone really needs to know to become a better gardener as I think about how best I can encourage folks in our Garden classes to learn about plants and gardening.

I'm coming back to the idea that it's really about understanding plants, where they come from (that is, what part of the world and what sort of habitat), why you're growing them, and whether they're suited to where you want to grow them. Vegetables need something quite different than prairie wildflowers like purple coneflower (Echinacea), rattlesnake master (Eryngium), and blazing star (Liatris), but it's still about learning about plants.

I'd welcome your thoughts!

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What do you need to know to be a good gardener?

I've been mulling over this today.

There's a traditional horticulture approach that includes soil science, basic botany and entomology, fertilizers and composting, learning about ornamental, herbaceous, and woody plants, integrated pest management and pesticide safety.

In the U.S., many of our Master Gardener programs coordinated by land grant universities follow a curriculum based on this approach. Some states have diverged into sustainable gardening (Oregon, Illinois, Maine, and others) or EarthKind gardening at Texas A&M.

But as a passionate gardener, who was 'trained' as a plant ecologist, I'm not sure that this is exactly what you need to know to be a good gardener.

Do you really need to know about soil chemistry and cations, and how that works?

Of course, understanding your soil's characteristics, building soil food webs, increasing soil health, and adding organic matter is important to any garden. If you want to grow plants that require nutrient-rich soil (think vegetables, which are seasonally harvested), soil enrichment is incredibly important, whether it's from organic cover crops or fossil-fuel dependent 10-10-10. But adding mulch and compost, along with organic fertilizers, takes care of these needs without learning about cation balance.

So what about Basic Botany and Entomology?

Understanding how plants grow, reproduce, how they're related, how they spread -- these are all important topics within 'Basic Botany.' Ditto for 'Entomology' and insects of all sorts.

I DO wish I had taken an enlightened Entomology class somewhere along the way in my 'formal' training. But there's an awful lot of dull stuff that masquerades as Basic Botany out there; trust me, I've had to teach it. And Entomology is equally dreadful, if mishandled.

And not to mention plant pathology (all the things that can go wrong) and often do, if your garden isn't in balance or has had pests introduced (root-knot nematodes, in my case).

Uh, pesticide safety? Excellent idea, but I think I'll just say no. I'm frankly relying on pest control from my wildlife-friendly garden.

What do you think you need to know to be a good gardener? To grow vegetables, flowers, shrubs, trees, etc.?

Let me know.

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