Backyard Garden Ideas and making a garden is not the formidable thing it is often supposed to be, nor caring for it when once it is made half so arduous as many suppose it is. Faithfulness to it, from beginning to end, makes it a joy to everyone as well as a profit. No matter how small a plot of earth is at one’s command, whether it be four square feet or four acres or even in containers, Mother Nature, aided by man’s ingenuity, has growing things that will thrive in it. The thing to do is to find out which of the plants you like and need will grow in the space you have available for them, and then learn when to plant them and how to care for them and for the soil that is to nourish them when once they are planted, until the happy day when they will have reached their maturity, and you will have had the satisfaction of giving an assuring answer to the old-time question of “How does your garden grow?”
The first step towards garden-making should start with a tape measure and a piece of paper. Measure up the space that is to be devoted to growing things and draw a plan of it to scale on a sheet of heavy paper, locating thereon the position of the house, outbuildings, existing trees, shrubs, walks, and all other features that must be taken into consideration in the planting scheme. Even if you are merely intending to have a border of flowers around the base of your house, sketch the outline of the building on paper as accurately as possible. There is an excellent reason for this; growing things should always be considered in their connection with their environment, just as in their wild state they are considered as features of the landscape, against a hillside, bordering ponds and rivers, fringing streams, carpeting meadows, and so on. So no matter how simple a plot you are planning to plant, a strip of shrubbery ten feet long by three wide may be all wrong if selected and planted without due regard for its place in the whole scheme of the premises.
When you have planned your garden on paper and planting time approaches heed the warning not to rush into a seed-store, or a nursery to buy a packet of every seed that has an attractive name, to take home and scatter about recklessly with over-enthusiastic faith that you have done all that is necessary to ensure a garden. Successful gardens are not made that way.
