You’re going to need more plants!

Someone passed by the garden at Lucas House the other day and said: you’re going to need more plants.

Not true – mostly.

It’s true, the planting looks rather sparse right now. The thing is, we’re used to instant gardens – big plants, already flowering. Boom, you’re done!

This garden was planted with smaller plants – they’re called plugs in the business. This means they’re small. And they were cheap, which was important when you need 1,200 of them.

But… they were planted 12 inches apart and they’ll grow! Indeed, they have doubled in size since they were planted in May.

Next year they will be even bigger. And the year after that, they will completely fill space.

Here’s the message: gardening isn’t an instant thing. We’re working with living organisms here, so we need to let them do their thing. After two years, I’ll have a garden that is much more healthy than one planted in an instant.

(Now, to be absolutely fair, there are a few gaps I will need to fill. The mountain mint wasn’t ready to plant when I got them, and a few of the grasses didn’t make it. But I have extras, so this month I’ll be filling gaps.)