Quick Tip: Gardens Don’t Have to Be Pretty to Be Successful

By Jennifer Poindexter

I’m going to share an unpopular opinion: gardens don’t have to be beautiful or aesthetically pleasing to be fruitful.

In a world filled with social media posts sharing beautiful gardens, we might think this is the norm or the expectation of gardeners everywhere.

In fact, it isn’t. There are lots of different ways to garden and many different reasons. Let’s discuss my quick tip a little further on why gardens don’t have to be beautiful to be fruitful:

Quick Tip: Gardens Don’t Have to Be Pretty to Be Fruitful

It’s not uncommon for people to enjoy lush, beautiful gardens and pretty spaces. It makes your soul feel a little more at ease and causes you to stop and take a deep breath.

However, this isn’t the goal for everyone and shouldn’t be the expectation for all gardens. Your garden may be a group of five-gallon buckets for growing vegetables gathered in a specific area.

You may also create a raised bed from old wooden slabs (I have done this – they were my first raised beds), use a tote as a raised bed, or use old barrels for a growing area.

If you’d rather grow your crops in the ground, till an area to create a reasonably sized plot. Then amend the soil and start growing.

These are a few ways to create growing spaces without spending a lot of money in the process. They aren’t always social media worthy, but they can help you produce fresh crops while you save for something different and grow your gardening skills.

Keep in mind, some methods of gardening are more difficult to keep up. For instance, growing in the ground makes it difficult to keep up with weeds sometimes. Don’t let this stop you.

Realize your plants may get sick due to pests and diseases when growing where there’s an abundance of weeds.

This happens to each plant at some point during the growing season. They all die from pests, diseases, or frost unless they’re perennials. Instead of letting the weeds deter you, enjoy the harvest while you’ve got it.

Many people jokingly call their gardens “jungle gardens” when they reach the point where weeds have taken over. It isn’t that uncommon and though it may reduce the size of your harvest, you should still be able to receive something from this growing space.

If you have enough time for a second planting prior to frost, you may even mow the area down and start again. My point is, gardening doesn’t have to be expensive or look like it stepped off a magazine cover to provide fresh foods or flowers.

It can be whatever you imagine based upon your skillset, materials available, and the growing conditions.

If you’re sitting on the sidelines, wanting to start a garden, but you don’t have the skillset to build gorgeous raised beds or the budget to purchase them, don’t sit any longer.

Instead, put your pretenses aside and create your own type of garden. Then enjoy the fruits of your labor from whatever type of garden plot you created.

Even if it becomes overgrown with weeds, stand back and smile because you took the first steps in becoming an avid gardener by growing crops in the space available to you.