There’s no way around it. Gardening mishaps happen. And if we’re going to be honest, some of them are quite the learning experiences. After all, it’s one thing to grow a patch of really hot peppers instead of those sweet banana peppers you thought you were growing. It’s another thing altogether to accidentally smack a hornet’s nest with your rake.
One nice thing about gardening mishaps is that we all have them. And at some point, we can meet up with our fellow gardeners around the kitchen table and share those stories and all have a good laugh. Hopefully we learn something, too. Because there are some mistakes that really don’t need to be repeated.
One such occurrence happened to Ivy Booth, as she was digging a new garden to grow roses. Knowing she would need to dig deep if the roses were to survive the cold Winter, she pulled out the shovel and went at it. But she got quite the surprise and a funny nickname when something unexpected happened. I think you’ll get a good laugh from her story, The Gas Garden.
Of course, gardening mishaps happen to non-gardeners, too, as writer Heidi Epps reveals in Not a Plant Person. We’ll give her credit for trying, but we never realized how easy it is to kill a succulent!
And don’t miss Harvey Silverman’s story about a very rocky garden. Too, Too Many Rocks explores the seemingly simple topic of what to do when you find your garden plot full of rocks. And then more rocks.
Feel free to stay a while and enjoy all the funny gardening mishaps we have to share below. And be sure to check out our Gardening Mishaps Collection while you’re here, which features a hand-picked selection of our favorite stories from this category.
Oof, today’s story got me. Weeds in the garden aren’t usually a big deal to me, particularly the flowering ones, even if they offer up hay fever. But the surprise crop at the end of this story is a flower that looks similar to Queen Anne’s lace, also known as wild carrot, but can put […]
Hippies and gardens go together. So do slugs and gardens, even though that’s not an ideal match. But how are hippies involved when there are slugs eating your garden? I’ll answer that momentarily. But first, let’s talk about slugs. I’m not one to say that slugs serve no purpose. I’m sure that every creature has […]
Plants are people too, you know! I mean, maybe not exactly. I’ve never heard one talk, though maybe their mouths are just so tiny we can’t hear them. What I do know is that any gardener will swear talking to their plants makes a difference, so they must have ears. That’s why I sometimes play […]
I have loved growing peonies over the last decade. They are my favorite flower and I’ve always dreamed about having a beautiful garden of them one day, with vases filled with pinks and purples and whites all around me. Little did I know that when we bought our house, the former owner had planted a […]
As a lifelong lover of humor and an unrepentant admirer of farce, I take particular delight in stories that masterfully blend structure, timing, and sheer absurdity. Perhaps it’s the engineer in me that appreciates a well-constructed narrative, or maybe it’s the writer in me that marvels when a tale unfolds with near-flawless comedic precision. Whatever […]
Seed starting mistakes. If you grow anything from seed, you’ve almost certainly made a few. In my case, I’ve started seeds too early, too late, outdoors when they should have been indoors and vise versa, and I’ve overwatered them. I’ve made some mistakes with moving the seedlings outside too soon. And I’ve made the mistake […]
If there’s one thing we should know about gardening, it’s that we have to have patience. Our hard work may take weeks, months, even years to produce the results we hope for. Which is why gardening mishaps can feel so devastating. All that time we spend hunched over the soil, spade in hand, creating the […]
Landscaping inspiration comes from so many places. It may be the unique hue of a fern leaf or the perfumed air around jasmine or rose flowers. The gentle curves of a garden path or the sense of serenity a perfectly tended garden brings may be a source of landscaping inspiration. And sometimes it’s something as […]
The Winter is long, but whenever I am feeling a touch of seasonal depression, I point my focus toward dreams of Spring and all the possibilities that will be in my garden, and around the perimeter of my yard. I sit down with seed catalogs, map out my plantings, and read old issues of GreenPrints […]
Most wedding ceremonies call for candles or colorful sand, but ours called for a seed. We heaped soil, smiles, and a shower of water on it. We promised to tend to our bonsai tree, and to each other, for the rest of our lives. It was the perfect unity symbol. Except, as I gazed down […]
