Gardening Aspirations in
2017
So pleased to have survived 2016, in proper order, family traumas, national political upheaval, and various household appliance and maintenance issues. As the New Year has arrived, I had planned on instituting and avowing to customary resolutions, but after listening to Frank McKinney, best-selling international author, modern realtor extraordinaire, multi-millionaire, and world wide- philanthropist’s philosophy, I want to outline my gardening aspirations in 2017 for you.
1. Make better use of quality #gardening products. There certainly are quality products in gardening. Whether it’s DeWit gardening tools, legacy tools which make gardening easier and allow the gardener to achieve their goals in the landscape, to using quality fertilizers like Sunniland TurfGro, RiteGreen, and Bloom Special, to planting quality annuals, perennials, ornamentals, shrubs, and trees, from Proven Winners, Monrovia, Plant Delights Nursery, Annie’s Annuals, and David Austin Roses, and many more![1] You will have healthier landscape and gardens, and a healthier you. 
2. Use national organizations, like the National Garden Bureau, to keep up with #gardening trends. I subscribe to multiple gardening organizations that keep me excited and let me know when the newest plant innovations and best-testing varieties are available.
3. Read and use more catalogs in my design work. Catalogs can showcase design choices, companion plants, become creative muses, and educate on how to grow plants.
4. Visit more botanical gardens. In nearly every major city in the world, there are gardens that showcase seasonal and regional flora, imaginative displays and container planters, and implement walkways and hardscape in ways that I may not have thought about. Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but it’s also a design tool where you can add your own personality, to become a garden that is one of a kind garden suited to your tastes.
5. Use more art in the garden. One of my greatest memories as a child in the 60’s is of visiting Weeki Wachee, an entertainment venue that featured live mermaids. They had gardens where child-sized vignettes of fairy tales and storybook characters. I can still see them vividly in my mind. Fifty years later, as I wander through gardens, I love to see the gardener’s own unique knick-knacks, statues, and artwork on display. It encourages anticipation, providing memories of your visit for a lifetime. Adding floating metal flowers, candles, bird baths, bird houses, furniture, or rain chains, in any artistic media will add serendipity to your gardens and create ambiance for your guests to enjoy.
2017 will be a year of recuperation, soul-searching, and respite from last year’s chaos. Choose to aspire to a higher form of gardening that reenergizes and rejuvenates by adding beauty, whimsy, a more harmonious design, with quality flowers, shrubs, and trees. Aspirations in the garden is good for your soul.
All photographs are owned by Teresa Watkins copyright 2017.
