I firmly believe that gardening is a lot of trial and error. And I’ve certainly made my fair share of errors over the years. But while a lot of that experimenting has been fun, and has been part of my learning process, there are a number of avoidable cock-ups which have cost me time, money and most importantly, precious plants. So I thought I’d share the common gardening mistakes I’ve made; things I wish I’d been told when I was starting out. To my horror I’ve counted and there are 10 things I routinely got wrong when first gardening – and I’m still occasionally guilty of them.
#1 Know Your Light
First off has to be know your conditions. If your garden is shady it’s no good ignoring that fact, and going for plants which thrive in full sun. Similarly, if you’ve blistering sunshine in your garden, shade lovers are not going to love it! I wish I’d known this. I’d have saved a small fortune and a lot of heart ache going for plants which I love but which were never going to thrive in my garden.
So I’d urge any gardener to be really honest with themselves about the conditions in their garden. Work out how the sun travels across your garden and how wet your conditions are. And go for plants which suit those conditions. Accept the conditions, no embrace them!
Those with a very shady, north-facing garden may despair with this, thinking their choice of plants is limited and they can never have a lovely garden. But as I discovered when I planned a scheme for my north-facing bed in my garden, shade-loving plants really don’t have to be boring.
My Mistake
Despite being fully aware of it, I have to confess, this is one of those gardening mistakes I still fall foul of. For example, I have a semi-shaded bed. I’ve dutifully planted it up with the appopriate plants ferns, hostas, heucheras, tiarella, hellebores, snowdrops and a gorgeous plant called silene fimbriata. But I wanted to put a rose in it, one of my favourite roses, Wildeve.
The guidance around this rose is that it will perform well in partial shade. So I told myself it would be fine. But what David Austin roses meant is it will perform well if it only gets 4-5 hours of sun each day. Well in my bed, once the trees around it have come into leaf, it gets nothing like that much sun, and you can see this in the rose’s performance. It’s gamely trying, but it’s not happy, and I feel guilty every time I walk past it.
#2 Soil’s pH
Just as you need to know the light conditions in your garden, it also pays dividends to know your soil. Is it acid, neutral or alkaline? I know it sounds like a complete faff, but if you stick a camellia or an azalea in very alkaline soil they will not be happy! There are kits you can use to test your soil. I’d give them a go.
It doesn’t mean you can’t have an acid loving plant if your garden is very alkaline. But you will have to work round it. For instance, my garden is alkaline, but I love camellias, so I have them in containers on my patio. Obviously using ericaceous (acidic) planting compost for them.
#3 Soil Types
Lots of gardening mistakes are made because people don’t know what type of soil they have. So what are the options? There are apparently six types but I think most of us have one of the first four below.
- Clay soil is ‘claggy’. It will feel heavy to work with but the bonus is it’s high in nutrients. My family garden in Wales was clay – it was hard blooming work. It had so much clay that it was actually ginger coloured! If you have clay it will be very wet and cold in winter and baked dry and crack in the summer. It’s easy to spot as it feels lumpy and slimy when wet (I guess like clay used in pottery). You can actually roll it into a ball which keeps its shape.
- Sandy soil drains easily. It is light and dry. It warms-up quickly in spring, but the down side is it also dries out quickly and is low in nutrients. So you will need to dig in lots of organic matter (garden compost or soil improver that you buy in from the garden centre) to help it retain moisture and feed the plants. It’s easy to tell if you have sandy soil as it is gritty to touch. A rolled ball of sandy soil will crumble easily.
- Silty soil is a bit trickier to spot I think. It is made from quite fine particles, so it drains well but also keeps its moisture. It’s also higher in nutrients than sandy soil. But because of its small particles, it can get compacted easily. Silty soil is smooth to the touch. It rolls into a ball easily, but won’t keep its shape as well as clay soil.
- Loam is a mixture of clay, sand and silt. As a result it’s the dream! It has all the benefits and none of the drawbacks. It rolls into a ball easily, but won’t keep its shape as well as clay soil.
- Peat soils are very high in organic matter and moisture. They tend to be dark and acidic but aren’t often found in gardens
- Chalky soils are very alkaline, stony and tend to drain easily. They may be light or heavy. Very chalky soils may contain lumps of visible chalky, white stones and some contain lumps of limestone. So a test to see if you’ve chalky soil is to put some in a jar of vinegar. If it froths it has chalk or limestone in it. Nutrients tend to leach out of this type of soil but this can be got around by regularly adding fertiliser.
Gardening Mistakes – Extra Something to Bear in Mind
Remember if your garden is large, the type of soil you have may vary from one part of your garden to the other. So even though it involves a bit of effort, I’d urge you to work out what you have. Then read up on it a bit, to understand what you need to do to improve it and what will suit it best. That way you will have very happy plants and be a very happy gardener!
Easier Gardening Mistakes to Remedy
The common gardening mistakes I’ve outlined above probably sound a bit technical and tricky to resolve. But happily, the other errors are much easier to tackle.
#4 Watering
Watering is such an easy thing to do, yet before I was put straight, I got my watering wrong! It’s so obvious when you think about it but in essence you should water the base of plants not the leaves. Also, don’t water in the middle of the day as you will lose a lot of water to evaporation. If you water during the heat of the day the water droplets on the leaves may also create mini magnifying glasses and your precious plants may be burnt.
I’ve read that it’s much better to do your watering in the morning or evening. However, much as I love watering in the evening (gin and tonic in one hand, watering can in other), I’ve recently had a problem with this.
I found that one of my clematis was plagued with mildew. This was because the soil and foiliage were staying moist for too long, encouraging mildew. So, if you spot mildew bear that in mind.
Also evening watering is more likely to encourage slugs and snails, I definitely am mindful of this with my lovely hosta Sum and Substance who resides in a pot on my patio. He’s far too tempting for slugs and snails, so I only water him in the morning.
#5 Gardening Mistakes – Planting
Other common gardening mistakes centre around planting. Firstly, it is really tempting when planting a border to go mad and have a bit of everything. I can understand why. After all, garden centres are full of so many lovely plants. No one wants to narrow their choice as it feels boring.
But I’m afraid being disciplined really pays off. You make much more of an impact by planting the same plant in groups or swathes even. The experts suggest using odd numbers of plants – so planting in 3s or 5s. But if you get it wrong and plant an even number, say 4, don’t panic. It’s not the end of the world. In my experience one of them will probably die off!
It also works well if you repeat some plants throughout a border. It creates what the garden designers call ‘rhythym’. A kind of recurring motion. Indeed I’ve seen wonderful garden borders where in reality they’ve only used three to five different types of plants throughout a border. That is too limited for me, but I definitely do restrict myself. My sunny border which is pretty large has just nine core types of plants in it.
#6 No Plan
If you don’t have a bit of a plan, your garden can end up a real hotchpotch. Plants you’ve bought on a whim, because they looked nice at the garden centre. This has definitely been one of of my gardening mistakes in the past. And I’m still susceptible.
However having a plan keeps me on the straight and narrow. By a plan I mean a garden style or look you are going for or colour schemes for different parts of your garden. If you have these you are less likely to waste money and come home with that plant which really doesn’t fit! For instance, I have created a hot corner in my garden. This only has plants from the hot colour spectrum – oranges, reds and yellows together with grasses. This gives me real focus when plant buying.
#7 Bed Width
If you’ve a small garden it is really tempting to create very narrow beds and borders. I think we’ve all seen those gardens with a big patch of grass in the middle and narrow beds all the way around the edge, with plants standing like soldiers in them. It looks so boring and unnatural!
You want a bed to be able to have a sense of depth. So if you can accommodate it, I’d go for 5 feet deep – or certainly 3 feet.
#8 Gardening Mistakes – Crowding
Most of us want an instant impact, and no bare soil. But in gardening, over time, this can result in overcrowding and very unhappy plants. Gardening mistakes like this one are easy to avoid. Simply check the spacing instructions on a plant. If it says 30cm, you want its neighbours on either side to be planted 15cm away.
#9 Plant Depth
I have definitely got my planting depth wrong. In fact I was looking at my containers yesterday and realised that one of my plants is not at the right depth at all! I think I was in a hurry as the light was failing when I replanted it. Anyway, enough of my excuses, I will remedy that as soon as I finish this blog!
There’s an easy way to avoid common gardening mistakes like this one. When planting a new plant, dig a hole that’s about two or three times as wide as the plant’s container. This gives its roots room to spread. But make sure the depth you plant it at matches the depth it has been planted at in its container. Do not planter deeper.
If you plant peonies too deep they won’t flower. Read about how to care for peonies But the impact for other plants can be more severe than this. Shrubs and trees planted too deeply over time may die.
What about if you plant shallower? Well, I’ve read that if you are planning to mulch (which you should) you can possibly plant something more shallowly.
There’s a logic to this I guess. Though I think it’s safer to simply match planting depth to the depth your plant is at in its container. After all, mulch gradually works its way into your ground and things level off.
#10 Being Too Tidy
The final one of my gardening mistakes centres around cutting back. I’m a big advocate of not tidying your garden too much over winter. It’s better for the birds and insects to have seed heads to feed on and old stems to shelter in. And if you are kind to birds and insects they will reward you in your garden by eating aphids, slugs and snails.
For instance, ground beetles eat slugs and sails. So supply safe areas for them to hide in, such as log piles, overgrown areas, bark mulch and piles of stones. I’m not saying that you need to be messy or your garden needs to be ugly. Far from it! You can create a really attractive log pile, planting ferns and other woodland plants next to it.
If you don’t want to ‘create’ such features, do the basics. Simply resist cutting back the old stems until March. I do, and only yesterday spied ladybirds who had over-wintered in my garden..hurrah, look out aphids, my garden is armed and ready for you!!
Gardening Mistakes – what have I missed?
So that’s it, my top 10 gardening mistakes which have cost me dearly over the years. What do you think? Have I missed off any killer errors you’d like to share?