Team Garden Designed, or Team Go with the Flow?

There are planners, and there are free spirits. This is true in the gardening world just as much as in other aspects of life. Of course, those personality traits don't always carry over from one part of one's life to another, but they often do. Both have benefits, and both can lead to beautiful gardens. We want to know which team our ATP members are on!

First up: Team Designed: Just about every magazine and gardening catalog has pre-made gardening plans. You buy the plants, put them in the correct area, and away you go. Landscape designers are everywhere, and they can customize a landscape just for your particular plot of land. Naturally, gardeners are often DIY'ers, preferring to do it ourselves. By computer, graph paper, or rearranging nursery pots on the ground after purchasing what they imagined, designing our gardens take many different forms.

On the flip side, there is Team Go with the Flow:

Buying what you like, and planting what you have: this team has no real plan at all. Some of these gardeners plant first, move later. Some never move, and instead simply focus on seeing each plant as an individual instead of the garden as a whole. Some enjoy the more natural approach of "here and there" gardening. Some just like a "more is more" approach. To others, it seems like anything involving planning takes all of the enjoyment out of gardening. Whatever the reason, these gardens are sure to be a surprise at every turn.

	At my core, I'm an organizer and a planner. My happiest gardens have been the ones that I've carefully planned out and executed. My frustrating areas are the ones I have no plan for. On the other hand, I'm learning to appreciate the unexpected planting, (but mostly only in those areas that are specified as such!), and the chaos extremeness that is my Hugel Area (even though it is planned chaos!).
	Many years ago I had the pleasure of giving a tour of my gardens to the Texas state coordinator of the master gardener program. In reference to the hodge-podge nature of my gardens, he remarked that I am taking the arboretum approach to landscaping! We had different varieties of all kinds of plants just here and there, stuffed where we had room. I took it as a compliment, which is how I think he intended it. :) I never plan an ornamental garden because I know that Trish will tell me where to move things when things get out of hand!!!