Gardening Tips for Beginners: Don't Make the Mistakes We Did

Plants that Can End Up Taking Over Your Yard, Deck, Home and Life Nearly as Quickly as Kudzu

Along with the joys of owning our first home came the thrill of having our first yard, complete with space for more than grass. We could actually grow plants, something we'd never been able to do in the low rent apartment with a postage stamp sized deck ( a one person deck with barely enough room to turn around, standing up) that we had before.

I was so happy to have a garden that I eagerly searched for everything I could find about garden ideas as well as garden design. I pored through garden catalogs , too. All the descriptions were so enticing and so I bought tons of plants, including some that were utter mistakes.

They weren't mistakes because they barely grew or just puttered along, putting out a tentative leaf now and then.

No, they were mistakes because they not only grew like wildfire but they threatened to take over the entire exterior of our home, every tree we had and maybe even level our home to the ground. Perhaps you'd like to avoid that type of beginning gardening experience? I thought so.

Here are my own Gardening Tips for Beginners: learned the hard way:

Gardening Tips for Beginners - look beyond the lure and plant descriptions of those garden catalogs and seed packets

I sure wish I had. Instead, I picked up many garden catalogs which made plants sound quite so appealing and easy to grow that I couldn't resist buying them. If you want to see how appealing garden plants can look in their descriptions or need some ideas, check out White Flower Farms catalog. You can see it here:

www.whiteflowerfarms.com

I've bought many plants from them and all have thrived. I recommend their shade garden plants. All have been winners.

Unfortuntely, here is one plant I did not buy from them: Trumpet Vines.

Trumpet vines are known to attract hummingbirds (and bees, but that is another issue). They have a lovely red or orange-red color and they certainly do look appealing while climbing up the side of a deck, cleverly attaching themselves to the wood. How easy! What smart, resilient plants!