The single most important thing to do for your garden?

What's the single most important thing you can do for your garden? GET OUT OF IT!

It's all too easy to sink into the comfort of your own garden...its rhythms and cadence. I'm not suggesting that you don't take pause and reflect on your successes. Instead the proposal is that you take steps to insure a flourishing future for your garden.

There is no time like present to leave the warm, fuzzy feelings generated by your own garden and venture out. At every season of the year, it behooves you to break camp and explore local nurseries, botanical gardens, and other private gardens around you.

So OUT WITH YOU! Go to local nurseries. I know things are in containers, but look at what's blooming whenever you go. Think about how you can incorporate more diversity into your garden. Not much flowering late in the season? This is a perfect way to pick up things that will bring you color and interest all the way until frost.

VAMOOSE! Everyone has a botanical garden or arboretum within striking distance. When's the last time you visited? Just like a kaleidescope they change every time you look at them. Stop in regularly--with a notebook and a camera. Take ideas home. Look at combinations. Do you have a particular challenge in your garden? See how the pros handle it. You might like it, you might not...but check it out.

SHOVE OFF! Check out your friend's gardens. Don't have any friends? MAKE SOME. Everyone knows that plant people are the most amazing folks around. There's no better way to learn what works and what doesn't in your neighborhood...than getting out into that neighborhood. You will be inspired. Sometimes the inspiration will cause you to do things. Other times the revelation will be what NOT to do (just don't be chippy about it). Either way you'll learn something you didn't know before.

So leave your garden. It's the single most important thing you can do to make it better. If you don't compare, you'll sit and stare. Go out, observe, learn...and then come back and DO. Raise your own bar.

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