• my place
  • the rural story
  • gardening tips
  • using garden tools
  • Privacy Policy
  • Join Me

    • Facebook
    • Pinterest
    • RSS
    • Twitter
    • YouTube

Home Garden Companion

Ilona's Garden Journal

  • Plant Library On The Journal
    • All Season Garden Color
    • Sitemap
  • Garden chores
    • Essential Garden Tools For Beginners
    • Garden Tips and Advice
  • Ilona’s Garden Home
    • Old House Blog
    • Garden Librarian
  • Ilona’s Garden Flavor Shop

gardening tips the REAL world

How Did I Get Here Again? Advice For Older Gardeners

Life Is Good

A fellow garden blogger has to cut back on the hard labor in the yard due to medical issues. I can identify. We all grow older, and our gardens grow older… we can move from a garden (or house) that is too much work, but you are sort of stuck with your body. This becomes the next challenge for many of us.

Lots of garden ideas and their accompanying pictures are lots of work, and probably involver the work of more than one person. I don’t think this sort of gardening is going to be sustainable… not because of the environment, but because of the nonrenewable energy of US! At the same time gardening is becoming more important for health and economic reasons. What to do?

Sure, machines…. but even machines require a certain amount of strength and energy. So it comes down to design.
1 Redesign your ideas

  • About what you want in your garden.
  • About what you expect from yourself.
  • About what portion of time and effort goes into the garden work.

My husband and I want more time to enjoy what we’ve worked on. we have worked hard on the house and garden for lots of years. LOTS. Mostly it was to nourish and shelter our growing family. Now our family is shrinking along with our ability to put the work into large gardens.

Even if we did have equal ability to expend effort, our desire now is to enjoy our lives more in activities outside our home and garden. That is an idea that is not age-related… we ought to have redesigned that part of our view years ago.

2 Figure out how your redesigned ideas and goals will look in garden projects and plantings.

  • Act like you are in a whole new place with a whole new garden.
  • Rethink how you want that place to function.

I’m starting to view everything with the desire to simplify the look. This is hard because I am such a collector/conservator sort of person.

But as I discover that a clean look and ease of maintenance is a good aesthetic for me… It becomes easier to part with those work and energy pit ideas of fussy plants, or rock edgings that require lots of hand snipping, or plant companions where one just swamps another, etc.

3 Go ahead and be brave- implement those revolutionary ideas. In the house it has been room by room, outside it is the same method. I am changing gardens one by one to require less work. The heavy duty vegetable space out in the back 40 (OK, just half an acre deep into the yard) is getting raised beds.

  • The tiller is a more manageable size for me and fits inside those raised beds. We resumed food growing because it makes sense for our future.
  • Flowers are now in containers, for annual types, and the hardier, self-sufficient type in mixed plantings.
  • I gave up the former English style perennial border, and don’t even plan to have another.
  • I am growing cutting flowers in the old veggie garden, which still shares space with lettuce and Swiss chard.

4 Frequent and small tasks rather than marathon work extravaganzas. I am trimming down  my life, and have been for many years. I decided my garden was important to me on many levels, so it actually is now gaining a bigger share of the pie chart.

For some, this change involves a new view of gardening, an end in itself, rather than an obligation to keep the curbside value of the house.

Keep it simple, but not to the point of dead boring- expand the interest in your yard to the extent that some consistent efforts will produce satisfying results.

Stay outside long enough to get some vitamin D. Puttering can be fun.

5 Design for small areas of big impact. Small areas are easier to take care of, if your work is restricted to a few parts of the yard, and the results are apparent. This includes a large empty urn, a few big rocks, a grove of small ornamental trees underplanted with groundcover.

Good design keeps the picture big and unified, not small and bitty and all over the place…which is really hard to take care of, anyway.

My New Garden Motto
Change is good, embrace it. Include enjoying life as part of the plan.
Grandma in the garden with grandson: passing on the love of gardening
Life is Good

Share this:

  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Related


« Knee Deep in June
June Flowers »

Oh, hi there!

I was a garden blog pioneer, and began writing on this blog in 2003. Before that I had begun a garden website that has been at its own domain since 2006, Ilona's Garden.

I still love writing, gardening, and art after all these years, although travel and grandchildren have become a big part of my life, now.

Mission

Finding your way home via the garden path

Portrait of a Gardener

gardener musings

Musings

What’s Wrong With Today’s Gardening?

Modern gardening

What Is Wrong?

Garden Journal

fine garden journal

Journal, Planner and Log Book

Newest Postings Here

  • Deals from Amazon
  • Hawaiian Flower Arrangements
  • HELLLOOOO, From The Other Side
  • February Gardening, Last of Winter in the Flower Garden
  • Compilation of Past Mini-Posts of 2003
buy quality plants

On Facebook

On Facebook

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Standouts

10 Useful Gardening Tips For Spring

You might also like

seeds

National Seed Swap Day in January

Garden advice

What Makes a Low Maintenance Garden?

Create A Child’s Garden, Grow Love For Nature

Growing Indoor Flowers In December

I Found Out About “She Sheds” And Coincidentally, About Friends

Top Posts & Pages

  • Mugo Pines: When to Trim and Prune
  • Purple Leaf Sand Cherry: Short-lived Shrub
  • Flowers that Monet Grew In Giverny
  • August Lilies
  • Hawaiian Flower Arrangements
  • Grandma Can Make Fairy Houses From Forest Finds
  • Pruning Your Mugo Pine
  • The Frugal Gardener
  • St. Francis Joke All About Gardens
  • Purple Leaf Sand Cherry, Prunus x cistena

Past Posts

ilonagarden

Instagram post 17959863785360234 Instagram post 17959863785360234
Instagram post 17989258745013455 Instagram post 17989258745013455
Instagram post 17976222752103831 Instagram post 17976222752103831
Instagram post 18056018824416584 Instagram post 18056018824416584
Instagram post 18335731483076224 Instagram post 18335731483076224
Instagram post 17977547744261532 Instagram post 17977547744261532
#atlanta #beautiful day☀️ #atlanta #beautiful day☀️
#atlanta #chattahoocheeriver #atlanta #chattahoocheeriver
Load More... Follow on Instagram

Copyright © 2023 · Part of Ilona’s Garden by Ilona Erwin

Copyright © 2023 · Ilona's Garden Journal