Your vegetable garden should be a space you WANT to spend time in.
Something I’ve realized about my own small garden (and how I find my brain reacting as I look at the gardens of others) is I crave BEAUTY.
Yes our backyard garden’s main purpose is to provide food for our families. We find ways to produce as much as we can in the space we have. But if we dread going to “work” and end up wanting to move on as quickly as possible, it’s no different than longing for the weekend when we have a paper-pushing job.
So make your garden a space you want to be in regularly. A place you look forward to going every day. Even a place to just sit and be without actually doing any work.
This could look like:
- Add annual and perennial flowers to brighten your garden while waiting for the colorful harvest (bonus: they’ll attract pollinators).
- Hang a birdhouse and listen to baby birds.
- Place a bench or chair in or next to the garden, and bring a book in the evening or your coffee in the morning.
- String some lights (there are some fun solar-powered ones out there).
- Grow vertically with trellises or garden towers or large pots.
- Add stone walkways.
- Get a windchime, windmill, or some lawn ornaments that make you smile.
- Surround it with a picket fence.
- Angle or curve your garden beds instead of planting in square, straight rows.
Do you have something “just for fun” in your garden? Or what might you want to add this year?
P.S. My “word” for this year is beauty — the story of how I arrived at that can be found here.
One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.
Psalm 27:4
Elizabeth says
Great suggestions! My garden is very boring this year (and struggling!) Because it’s our first garden season here. Illy have to get our trellis up and think about some lights.