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.
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 […]
What attracted me to this story initially isn’t the funny title, it was actually the hosta-hater in me. I’ve always wanted to know how to kill hostas. Let me explain. When we moved into our home several years ago, it was clear to me that the former owner loved hostas. She had done the most […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
I’ll be the first to admit I’ve made more than a few gardening mistakes. You name it, I’ve probably made it. That’s certainly been the case when I’ve tried growing new plants or worked with new gardening technology. Luckily, most of those gardening mistakes have been pretty minor and easy to correct. (Let’s not mention […]
Do you love any flowers that are weeds? There’s a large plot in our yard that, when we first moved in, I was determined to turn into a whimsical, easy-to-care for cottage garden with stepping stones going through it, and flowers my daughter could cut and assemble for her many outdoor projects. Feeling a bit […]
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 […]
