Generally, if you’re a pitiful gardener, you have been gardening for awhile. You’re not a beginner, as stuff is growing in your yard. So you don’t have an entirely brown thumb either. You’ve made choices of plants at the store or nursery, decided where to put them in the yard. You probably have lost a fair number of plants over time, but can’t diagnose why. Sound familiar? You betcha! The good news, you’re not alone!

The reason your yard may not look as great as you’d like, even though you try, is that most of us are not taught how to garden. It may be the #2 leisure activity in America, but that doesn’t mean we’re all successful at it. We think we should be able to do it, since we’re using natural materials, and nature will take care of them, right?

The thing about a garden is that even though you’re working with natural things, you actually create an unnatural environment when you mix plants up. We pitifuls tend to put things together that we like…not what should go together naturally. We might put cactus, roses, banana trees, and magnolias in the same bed. These come from different parts of the world, have different soil needs, water needs, light needs, and grow at different rates…and none of this may mesh with how much effort we want to devote to them.

That’s how we end up pitiful. Before you buy another plant, you have to get a grip on the things you like and don’t like about gardening. Look at what is going well in your yard, and what isn’t. It has to be about you first, not the plants. Ask yourself, do I hate weeding? Watering? What plants do I ignore? You have to figure out why. This is the first step on your recovery towards a green thumb, and becoming pitiful no more.