Garden as a Process: Working with Nature
In our task-driven lives, it’s tempting to treat everything like a checklist. Paint the room. Clean the garage. Done. But gardens aren’t like painted walls. They’re not static, finished projects. Gardens live, breathe, grow, and change—sometimes in ways we don’t expect.
Instead of trying to control every aspect, what if we approached the garden as a process?
Gardens Are Living, Not Static
When you install a garden, you’re not creating a finished product—you’re initiating a natural process. Yes, you can (and should) start with a thoughtful design. But three to five years later, that garden will look different from your original plan.
Some plants will thrive. Others won’t. Some will move, spread, or vanish. New ones may show up. The end result depends on the variable response of plants to soil, moisture, sun exposure, wildlife as well as your decisions along the way.
Think of yourself as a steward, giving gentle nudges rather than forcing the garden to match an exact image in your head.
Embrace Variability
Gardens are unpredictable for a few reasons:
Genetic variation: Even within the same species, plants behave differently—especially if grown from seed. Named cultivars are typically genetically identical, but even they may perform differently than the species based on where they were bred or what adaptations they were selected for.
Soil and site conditions: Soil texture, compaction, organic matter, and site history can vary dramatically—even within a single bed.
Weather: Year-to-year fluctuations in rainfall and temperature, especially when at extremes (abnormally hot/cold or wet/dry), influence which plants thrive or struggle.
The takeaway? Variability is normal. Expect it. Observe it. Work with it.
Plants Are Always Competing
In any garden, plants compete for water, sunlight, and nutrients. Sometimes one dominates and others disappear. Sometimes a balance forms. This competition includes not just the plants you intentionally planted, but also old seeds in the soil and newcomers from nearby.
As a gardener, your choices—when and how much to water, weed, mulch, cleanup — all favor or disfavor different actors. You can preserve a diverse mix (which takes more effort), let dominant plants take over (less effort), or find a middle ground with balanced interventions.
Maintenance That Nudges the System
These are the “routine” tasks, which may seem mundane, but all impact the competitive balance of the garden system favoring one plant or another, ultimately impacting the potential design outcomes for the garden.
Weeding
Year one? This is the time to be extra diligent. Soil disturbance from planting brings old weed seeds to the surface, leading to increased weed germination. If you don’t remove them, they’ll potentially outcompete your new plants, increase future weed pressure if they are allowed to go to seed or persist (perennial weeds) or make your garden look messy.
In year two and beyond, as more seedlings are from your own plants, you should be more selective about what stays and what goes. As you’ve exhausted the seeds that germinate from the original planting disturbance and your plants cover more ground (which blocks sunlight from getting to germinated weed seedlings), you will gradually see less weed pressure.
Mulching
Mulch helps early on by reducing weeds and regulating soil temperature. But long-term, it blocks germination of seeds from your plants.. This is especially important for short-lived perennials (3 to 5 year life span) like coneflowers or columbines. Ever seen a wild meadow covered in mulch? Neither have we.
Avoid annual mulching if you want a dense, mature garden.
Fall or Spring Cleanup
Cleaning up every bit of plant debris may look tidy, but it disrupts 2 natural cycles. Plants that depend on reseeding (annuals, short-lived perennials) to survive are disfavored and more likely to disappear from the planting. In the event of a heavy reseeder that threatens to take over a planting, remove most of the seed heads and deposit them in a brush pile. Plants are nutrient miners, moving nutrients from the soil to their stems, leaves, and flowers. During cleanup, if you don’t let their dead plant matter decompose on site, your soil becomes depleted over time with less organic matter and nutrients. Lastly, dead plant material, whether standing or as a pile in the garden provides a level of insulation/windbreak for your plants. For those of your plants that are less resistant to cold temperatures, this increases their survival chances during a prolonged cold period.
Leave more in place to support long-term soil, plant health and winter hardiness.
Watering
Once your plants are established, try to water less. It sounds counterintuitive, but overwatering promotes shallow-root growth amongst all plants and faster growth amongst more competitive and reseeding dependent plants. This includes weeds.
Less water supports deeper roots, more resilient plants, and a garden that requires less effort long-term.
Garden Editing: Design Nudges to the System
Editing is the gardener’s ongoing design response to how the garden evolves. It’s not about fixing mistakes—it’s about adjusting to the competitive responses of the plants which make up your garden.
Replacing Plants
If a plant dies, ask why:
If most of the same species failed, the plant likely wasn't suited to the site. Replace it with something that is already thriving in similar conditions or something with a better tolerance for the site condition you believed led to failure.
If the failure was due to care issues (over/underwatering, foot traffic), correct the problem and try again. If you can’t correct the problem, replace it with a plant that is less demanding in terms of care.
If the plant was just weak to begin with (e.g., from a clearance rack), source a healthier version.
If it was only one out of a group, it might just be bad luck—replant or leave as is accepting it as a natural loss.
Relocating Seedlings
Seedlings from your own plants are a sign that your plants are truly happy on the site and established. You can leave them where they are, move them to empty spots, or share them. Use plant ID apps like PictureThis or INaturalist to tell friend from foe.
Managing Aggressive Plants
When a vigorous plant starts crowding others, decide whether to intervene:
Thin, divide, cut back aggressive growers to weaken them and move them away from slower growing plants. Taking this path is not a one time action and will force you to revisit this issue throughout the year and from year to year.
Relocate the aggressive grower to a space where it has more room and replace with a more well behaved plant.
Or accept the change and let the planting evolve on its own.
Filling Gaps
Gaps encourage weeds. If your garden isn’t filling in, add more of what’s working or introduce complementary groundcovers to create a tighter planting matrix.
Managing Height & Flopping
Tall, floppy plants can be managed:
Chelsea Chop: Trim the top ⅓ of the plant in May or June to encourage shorter, bushier growth.
- Cut back on water and soil fertility (i.e. amending with compost or fertilizing) to reduce water/nutrient availability and associated growthIncrease plant competition for resources: Plants which lack other plants nearby have unfettered access to the water and nutrients in the soil around them. Adding more plants will provide a similar effect as to cutting back on water and soil fertility. An added bonus is the structural support that plants provide to each other.
Relocate to a sunnier spot.
Replace with a shorter growing cultivar (i.e. Ruby Joe Pye Weed vs Sweet Joe Pye).
Let the Garden Evolve
At its core, a garden is a living system. It will change—because plants are constantly competing, adapting, growing, and fading.
Your job as the gardener is to observe and respond with thoughtful maintenance and edits. The more you try to force the garden to fit your original plan, the more work it will require. But if you learn to work with nature, your garden will reward you—with beauty, surprise and less work.
Final Thought
A garden isn’t something you finish. It’s something you grow with and learn from.
