1. Take it easy. Unless you are growing kelp or kudzu, and in SE Michigan that means neither plant, things are going to take time. Gardening is not for people who like instant results; plants are living things that are trying to make existence happen like the rest of us. Be patient with your plants, respond to their needs with deliberation and reason, and enjoy the unfolding drama.
2. This is a footnote to "take it easy": dream big but proceed slowly. Start with a few plants that you like, and then with a single bed, and give it a few weeks to see how it fares under your guidance. If the weeding and care does not seem to dominate your gardening experience, then consider more plants and more beds and diversify and enlarge your entry into growing country. This is very important because you want to enjoy your experience and not let it turn into a chore. Yeah, it can be easy to go crazy once you get into this path of life, but it can also come with some degree of conversion zeal that burns out a lot of people.
3. If you do find yourself really taken by a particular plant, be it an entire species, or just a single sort of fellow, feel free to go crazy anyway. Stick to the one bed at a time rule, but feel free to indulge in reading up on your favorite botanical friend and possibly plant a whole lot of him or her until you are satisfied. For me personally, my weakness is for rhododendrons. I could have a garden full of them, even just one type, and be thrilled. There is no such thing as too many! You can learn a lot about plants in general by focusing on your particular friend. When the time comes to find new friends, you may find your attention moving around; in a few years you will be surprised at just how many different plants you have in your garden and by how well you have come to know them, simply because you did take things one step at a time and were not overwhelmed. You may have then become a plant junkie, and your garden will be amazing. Good job!
4. Listen to good advice but laugh at bad opinions. What I mean by this is don't let snooty plant people push you around. If you like X plants, don't stop liking them just because someone says that they are hard to deal with, ugly, etc. A weed to one person is a beautiful flower to another (within reason, don't go nuts with the milkweed because odds are the neighborhood association with tar and feather you; yes, I like milkweed and its benefits to monarchs), meaning that a weed is something growing where you don't want it to. Now, if they tell you that X plant is going to be hard to deal with here in Michigan, by all means, listen up and find out what they mean, so that you can enjoy it and give your friend a fighting chance at survival.
5. Your local library is your friend for helping your plant friends. In some parts of SE Michigan, we are blessed with a network of libraries that you can get books from even if out of your local area. Head to the gardening section and take advantage of the free information. For that matter, you might even have lovely landscaping around the building that has been lovingly made possible by volunteers. If you see them in action, converse, learn, enjoy how awesome our libraries are!
Basically, as the meme says, keep calm and carry on. Oh, and if I am allowed to sneak in a quick 6: Placement is not always permanent. Like plants tend to be, let your imagination and design mission go organic and make things happen as they work for them and for you. I'm going to throw out a before and after set of pictures to show you the start and current status of a garden bed to sort of visually demonstrate what I am getting at in this post. This bed had some ups and downs and is now considered my "shut up, neighbors" bed made for curb appeal as much as my enjoyment. I let it get out of control at one point and it turned into quite the mess of grass and buried plants; seeing the abandoned lot aspect of it prompted me into action to make things better. Only one of the original plants is still there, while the hostas have remained and served as the core of a partial-shade foliage dominated garden. In fact, the whole thing pretty much started when my beagle of happy memory passed on; she used to make this her spot to pee on the grass and ensure nothing could ever grow here. Every time I muck around in the dirt here makes me think of an unfolding story inspired by a fascination with hostas and the need to do something about a bare spot.
Like I said, an unfolding story. An epic poem rather than an article, a marathon rather than a sprint. A beagle that has become a birch!
This?
Started out as this:
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