The Focused Garden
November 21, 2025 | By TigreBlume
This week, I finally 🙌 cleared out the remaining foliage and depleted soil from the planters on my backyard deck (one of the last few items on my fall garden cleanout to-do list!). I grow annual flowers and green vegetables (like cucumbers, leafy greens and bush beans) in these planters. As I was going through each planter and reminiscing on all of the beautiful blooms that graced each pot during the summer and early fall months, I am really proud of what I had accomplished in the garden this year 😉.
This year, I made a deliberate shift from quantity to quality and intention. I focused only on growing food my family and I will eat and the flowers I truly have space for. In years past, I often sowed far too many seeds, leading to excess plants destined for the compost bin, or I planted filler varieties that didn't align with my vision instead of the things I truly loved. This new approach ensures every plant serves a purpose 💖.
For instance, last year, I did not plant nearly enough paste tomato plants as I would have liked as I decided to try growing a few variety of slicer tomatoes - although my family and I don't really enjoy eating those type of tomatoes very much (I thought it would be nice to add a few new varieties in garden so we could try them out and see if it would change how we feel about slicer tomatoes 😁 - it did not!). This year, I knew I wanted more paste tomatoes to make pleny of tomato and pasta sauce to last us a few months. So, I grew more paste tomatoes and eliminated growing slicer tomatoes. I also knew I still wanted to experiment with growing a new tomato that I had never grown before (this year it was the sun gold cherry tomato). However, instead of planting more than one of the variety I had never tried, I only added one of them to the garden. This way, I get to try it out and see how it performs in the garden without compromising space needed to grow an abundant supply of paste tomatoes!!
Every season reinforces a key gardening truth: less is often more. Given my limited space and shorter growing window, I maximize every planter and bed, making my approach highly strategic. This means meticulously choosing what to sow and when to plant it out to ensure no space, time, or energy is wasted on crops unsuitable for my climate, unappealing to my family, or simply unenjoyable to cultivate. While I always leave a little room for experimental growing, it's strictly framed by this core objective.
As gardeners, we invest countless hours tending to our plants, hoping for that peak moment of harvest or magnificent bloom. So, make that effort worthwhile! Be purposeful and grow the food you love to eat and the flowers you genuinely want to gaze at. Embracing a little trial and error is simply part of the joyful journey toward cultivating what truly matters to you.
Trying new things in the garden inevitably leads to some failures, and sometimes a plant just won't thrive due to your specific micro-climate or other environmental factors. However, the trial-and-error process is invaluable. Once you discover what works and what doesn't, you gain the knowledge to confidently focus on cultivating plants that truly thrive in your specific growing space, soil, and climate.
A focused garden plan provides the perfect balance: it lets me confidently grow the successful staples I love, while still leaving room for exciting, new experiments. This strategic balance not only keeps gardening fun and dynamic but also significantly reduces anxiety, because I have a high degree of confidence in the outcomes, making the gardening experience consistently rewarding .
Gardening should be fun and enjoyable. So let's continue to try to make space for the things that matter. We're not growing less, we're growing better. 🌱
