C-O-D-E-R-E-D

Work by chiseling down big projects into small steps. Set up an outside area with the tools you will need. Give yourself a time
limit each day so you don’t become discouraged by obstacles or
overwhelmed by the enormity of a particular job.
Remember that the journey is the destination. Work mindfully knowing
that each week’s task is changing you as well as your landscape and
garden.
When winter rolls around, bring in the outdoors. Decorate with bouquets
or leafy branches in watering cans, garden benches along a kitchen
wall, or tropical fish in a pretty bowl. Create a garden meditation
corner with flowering plants.Add a willow chair with a chintz cushion
and a small trickling water feature. Nestle garden-inspired quotes in
the comers.Come rain or snow,enjoy your lush little inside Eden.

Is it no small thing,” the poet Matthew Arnold asked, “to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring?”7
Certainly gardens are a green infrastructure of ecological and spiritual prosperity that inspire healthier more livable communities. Your garden is also a private sanctuary where you can indulge your own sense of connection to the earth. Here you can find tranquility and plant elements of surprise—and did you know you can do all that without spending a fortune or moving a mountain?
Begin by documenting your wildest dreams. Have you yearned to create a butterfly haven? Do you long to grow an exotic kind of rose or to build a lily pond where you can sit every evening at twilight?
Prioritize these dreams and divide into the number of years you expect to live at your current residence. Just have fun with this; nothing about it is set in stone.

What stories will your landscape tell? They are not all sweet or pretty, roses and lavender. I planted a hawthorn tree in front of my house to celebrate my new life as a single woman. Not long afterward it died. The Chinese plum tree planted by my ex thrived, of course, even though it was never watered. I like this story that until now only my landscape knew. The landscapes of our lives are full of mysterious paradox, perplexing puzzles, and peculiar people. They remind us not to take ourselves too seriously. They teach us to pause just to wonder. The landscape is what it is. Our story evolves from moving through it.
“Gardens slow things down,” writes Dominique Browning. She knows they help us tell our stories. “I want simply to teach my children to see the roses,” she adds. “One day they will know enough to stop and smell them, too.”