Gardening is wonderful, relaxing, and joyous.
It can help you feel so much better after a bad week, and help you feel so much pride when the space is wonderfully put together once more.
However, as we all know, it takes a great deal of effort to get there.
Sometimes, if part of your garden feels frustrating to manage, you’ve incurred costs you didn’t expect, or the weather hasn’t been so great, you may have lost motivation in managing this space.
That’s totally understandable of course.
You’re not less of a homeowner because you keep your garden in a “maintenance state” as opposed to investing your time every weekend to make it perfect.
But if you once loved gardening and now don’t engage with the hobby at all, that can be a little sad, in the same way a book lover that hasn’t read this year can begin to miss it.
What if the motivation needs a little kickstart to get going as well?
No worries, that’s quite common too. In this post, we’ll discuss how to gain motivation for your gardening effort again, and no doubt adore that experience anew:
Start With A Small Project
Many times, the best way to get back into a hobby is by starting with something small and achievable.
Looking at your whole garden might feel like you’ve got too much to do, which can be a big deterrent and leave you throwing your hands up, ready to do something else instead.
This requires a mindset shift.
So instead of thinking about the entire space, you could just pick one tiny corner or one single task to focus on.
Perhaps you could repot just one plant that needs new soil, or you could spend twenty minutes pulling weeds from a single flower bed just to get the ball rolling of your momentum and motivation.
In that way, completing a small job gives you a nice little feeling of accomplishment, and it can give you a little burst of motivation to do the next small thing, so you might find your passion for the garden returning naturally.
Focus On Low Effort, High Reward
If your heart is simply not in it, gardening can feel like a chore with a slow payoff, but you can change that feeling by focusing on tasks that give you a lot of enjoyment for very little work.
An example could be planting perennials that come back year after year without a ton of maintenance, or you could get a few very beautiful annuals that give you a huge burst of color and a lot of joy for a season.
You might also want to think about adding a simple water feature to your garden, since the sound of flowing water is very peaceful and can make a space feel much more relaxing right away.
Perhaps you want to relay the turf, which looks good instantly, or bring in a prebuilt shed.
That in itself can help you feel the space anew.
Deal With The Annoying Problems
The issues that annoy you the most about your garden are often the things that make you want to avoid it altogether.
Don’t worry, we’ve all been there.
It could be as silly as one patch of stubborn weeds that never seems to go away, a broken fence panel that you’ve been meaning to fix for months, or a messy shed that you can’t stand to be in.
In these cases, it’s wise to dedicate some time to dealing with just one of these frustrating problems.
You’ll likely find that once that single obstacle is gone, the whole space feels a bit better and you’ll feel a sense of relief.
Then you’ll feel a sense of momentum to do the other things. It’s like when you don’t exercise for a while and dread that next gym session, but you do it then feel great about it.
That in itself can be wise.
Add A New Focal Point
Sometimes, what you really need is a fresh perspective on your garden, and a new focal point can provide exactly that.
You could decide to plant something new that you have always wanted, giving you something to be excited about and look forward to in your garden’s future.
Or perhaps you could think about tending your treeline with Speciality Trees, allowing them to help you reformat the tree area or an old tree into something to admire and care for.
Other examples might include a new piece of art, a beautiful new bench, or a new section of unique plants to draw your attention and give you a new reason to fall in love with your garden once more.
Even a new reading spot with a nice deck chair can be a good idea.
Focus On What You Love
It’s easy to get caught up in all the things you feel like you should be doing in your garden, especially if you’ve been watching a fair amount of gardening shows or YouTubers.
In these cases you may feel obligated to be planting vegetables, or you think you should have a perfect lawn, or a huge flower bed.
Yet if those things feel like chores to you, then you might want to stop doing them for a while and just focus on what you love.
If you love growing flowers, you could just do that and forget about everything else.
If you love the simple act of digging in the soil, you could just do that.
Maybe you don’t want to make your garden perfectly eco-friendly until you have a koi fish pond, and that’s okay.
It’s your space.
Find A Partner
Gardening can be a wonderful, solitary activity, but it can also be a lot of fun with someone else.
Even if you ask a friend or family member if they want to help you out with some of the bigger projects, you could work on it with a sense of motivation.
Having a partner in the garden can help you get through a lot of work much faster, and it can also give you someone to talk to while you’re putting the effort in.
Moreover, you might get a lot of motivation from having a set time to get together with someone to work on the garden.
With this advice, we hope you can more easily regrow your garden and feel great about it too.
