Common Gardening Mistakes

As brand-new gardeners, people become so excited that they go crazy ordering from the seed catalog and, later, buying plants at the greenhouse. 

Gardening is a learning process, and professional landscaping companies see lots of mistakes in the process of all that learning.  But that’s a good thing because people tend to learn more from mistakes than success.  Here are some common mistakes and what they teach us.

Avoid too much too soon

As brand-new gardeners, people become so excited that they go crazy ordering from the seed catalog and, later, buying plants at the greenhouse.  We want to try everything right now.  

Unfortunately, this often causes a person to become frustrated and overwhelmed.  A few things did grow successfully, but for the most part, it’s easy to waste a lot of money on seeds and plants that never get planted, or that didn’t thrive due to ignorance.

The lesson is to start small and take things step by step.

Don’t wait to start a garden

Most people have an interest in gardens for a few years before they actually plant one and wait to do so because they think they don’t know enough.

The best feeling is realizing that a person can never know all there was to know about gardening.  But a lot of gardening care can be gleaned by experience, and experience will not come to those who wait. 

The lesson is to just get started. A person can learn more from doing something than reading about it. Your professional landscape company will help you along the way, and watching the plant growth cycles is exciting and worthwhile.

Don’t Plant Without A Plan

 Some people make this mistake over and over until they consult a landscape professional. The pros know that a little planning can make a big difference. It’s a much better option than buying seeds or plants that are attractive at the moment while looking through a catalog or walking around a greenhouse. 

As a result, the beginner can end up with more plants than garden space, plants that wouldn’t thrive where they put them, or, in the case of edibles, wasted vegetables and fruit. Consulting a landscape professional, however, makes better use of the space and has a much higher likelihood that the plants will thrive.

Planning means thinking about how much space is available to grow things, having goals for that season, and the homeowner’s budget, which means a much more cost-effective and often more attractive garden.