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- Plan to stay in your garden as long as possible.

Just as the garden changes with the seasons, so too the gardener changes with the passing of time. In most instances, timely interventions and reinventions work best.

ESTHER PADDON is an author and lifelong gardener who grew up on her granny’s stories about her mother’s colourful garden. Esther is always trying to squeeze more plants into her small Geraldine plot.

True gardeners are a peculiar kind of people – creative and adaptable, and I would rate myslef among that brand. A lifetime of gardening has seen us change our garden styles over the years to whatever fancies we have at the time. Moving house and starting all over again means accepting another person’s ideas and slowly transforming them into our own. Maybe we have been fortunate enough to build a new house so we can start our garden from scratch. This opens our creative minds to all sorts of exciting possibilities.

However our garden is achieved, one thing is for sure: it is hard, physical, but rewarding work, whether it is in the flower garden where the ultimate pleasure it brings is to our eye or in the vegetable patch where we have the bonus of producing fresh food for healthy eating.

As we age, one thing is also certain: change is no longer a choice. It becomes inevitable. We may not like to admit it, but while age has given us lifetime experiences, it also comes with a big tag, which clearly says limitations!

How often have you heard this advice: it’s time you moved to a smaller place and your garden is too big for you to manage?

Don’t believe it (unless you physically can’t). You may not be able to accomplish all you once did but change your expectations, change your garden style, change your methods. Change anything but stick with your own garden as long as you can.

I have entered that older senior brigade yet it took a fall to bring me to my senses, my garden senses that is.

If I wanted to stay in my own home and continue to enjoy my garden, I needed to make a few adjustments.

The first thing that became evident was I needed to change my style of gardening. Instead of frantically trying to garden all day and tidy up massive areas of the garden, it was time to go at a slower pace. And not just a slower pace, but also for a shorter period of time.

I have taken a new motto as my guideline: short and snappy! Instead of having long sessions of bull-at-a-gate pace, my focus has changed.

Speed spruces are not what gardening is about. Gardening is letting your senses take control, taking time to see, smell and hear as well as touch those weeds you want to eliminate. Time to talk to your plants and feel relaxed and at one with nature. I have invented two words which describe the perfect outcome of short-burst gardening: sweet sensations!

As we age, we need all the sweeteners we can get in the garden as well as in the home. Probably though it is wiser to eliminate sweeteners from the menu and transfer them to our gardening efforts.

There are times when we need to consider our options. For instance, mowing the lawn can be a chore for a woman. You may have a small lawn, but it can be a bigger problem than a large lawn where a ride-on lawnmower can be exciting fun.

For me, my biggest problem was always starting the motor mower. My hubby could easily start the mower with one pull of the starter rope whereas I would use too much choke ending up frustrated as I had to try again later. I could never understand how a man can start a motor first try. I think it must be a “man” thing.

Today there are options such as an electric mower which goes at the flick of a switch and your only problem is keeping the cord out of the way of the blades.

I think though I have the perfect solution. I have a man, Giles Patrick, who comes and mows my lawn on demand. But the best part is before he mows the lawn, he brings his weed eater and whizzes round all the edges in no time at all before zooming round the lawn with his mower – which always starts at the first pull of the cord. Ah yes, this is another time I thorouhly recommend the short and snappy option.

There are definitely times to let someone else do the hard work. And the edges? Simply bliss to see them neat and trimmed – all in a matter of minutes.

Oh yes, perhaps I am forgetting the pollution aspect? My plants do not seem to suffer. And just five minutes of a whizzer… would that create a pollution problem?

I am open to suggestions but I am not going to promise I will banish Giles and his whizzer from my garden.

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en-nz

2022-08-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmagazines.pressreader.com/article/283102777798965

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