Does Your Garden Overwhelm You? Try this!

OK...let me tell you about my gardening, along with a few suggestions!

1. I try to only plant perennials, with a few annuals thrown in for color. Perennials take care of themselves and get better every year!
2. This phenomenon young mother's are struggling with is exactly why I began to get help with the house! My choice was to garden rather than clean house, which I always considered a hateful job. So, if you need help, decide what you’d like to do LESS and get help with that! Also, if you get that help with house work, it allows you to be outside with your kids and dog, rather than having them watch you scrub toilets!
3. DON’T worry about how the garden looks. It’ll be there when you have time...just like dirty dishes!
4. Use a HEAVY layer of mulch around all your garden beds! You’ll have far fewer weeds and it looks great, not to say it’s wonderful for the plants as well!
5. If possible, have that big, strong husband of yours cut the grass and help with weeding. That will leave you with some more open time to garden. If he doesn’t want to do that, hire a kid to cut it for you. You can also pay someone to weed for you...but I have found that often they don’t really know what the difference is, and you end up unhappy.
6. Do have your little children (and older ones too!) help you pull dandelions and other OBVIOUS weeds. It will look better (and since s/he’s pulling the flowers, they don’t have a chance to set seed.) The weeds will eventually die out. AND it gives her/him a sense of purpose.
7. I never hired a gardener because they tend to be very free with chemicals and hedge clippers. NOT a good combination.
8. Remember that a garden should be for your enjoyment! If that’s not the case, begin to phase OUT some of the garden...and just plant ground cover instead (like pachysandra) until the day comes when you’re ready, and then just pull the groundcover out and plant what you want. Maybe ground cover in the back yard and the other flowering perennials out front so it looks nice for passers by. But you will have to spend a bit of time there like maybe a few hours on a Saturday morning...or whenever.
9. Do NOT dig up the bulbs. They will come up by themselves and will pop right through any ground cover. They won’t cause you any additional work, I promise!

Any other gardening questions I can help you with?