Hortus sanus: Failure is on the menu at Mother Nature's Diner

Welcome to your own private garden restaurant, Mother Nature’s Diner.

You plan to order beautiful flowers to feast your eyes on, loamy soil that looks like chocolate cake mix, and the perfect amount of rain to wash it all down. For dessert, you’d like a few sweet song birds to listen to, dozens of pretty butterflies to amuse you, and a bonnet full of bees buzzing slowly from flower to flower.

Hortus sanus: Your gardening helicopter has been cleared for landing

Exteme close up inspection
The tower has cleared you and your gardening helicopter for landing.

Are you constantly checking to see which plants need more water, less water, more sun, less sun, more shade, less shade? Do you inspect your plants daily to figure out if they should be pruned, deadheaded, staked or shaped? Do you take a magnifying glass with you so you can see deep into the

Hortus sanus: No Money? No Problem!

Ever feel like you are on the outside of the garden gate, looking in, wondering how you could ever possibly afford to have a nice garden, a healthy garden, hortus sanus?

Many gardeners think they can buy their way into hortus sanus. Others despair that they don’t have a lot of money to spend on their gardens, so they’ll be forever in a statue of hortus insanus.

But money doesn’t have all that

Hortus sanus: Don't ignore Mother Nature's laws and rules

Symphyotrichum oblongifolium 'October Skies'
The laws of nature can not be broken!

You must learn to accept and abide by Mother Nature’s laws to achieve hortus sanus in your garden, or you will find yourself in a state of hortus insanus.

You can’t make water flow uphill.

You can’t specify the amount of rain and snow you want to fall on your garden.

You can’t control the speed of the wind.

Hortus sanus: Chief Gardening Officer

Congratulations! You’ve worked hard to get to the top, you’ve paid your dues and sown your seeds and now you are the Chief Gardening Officer of your very own garden.

You are in charge. You are the one who makes the final decisions. You decide which row to hoe, which weed to pull, which flower to plant. The buck stops, the fruit ripens, on your potting bench.

You are now the one who is

Hortus sanus: The wilderness called and it wants your garden back

The wilderness on the edge of a Dallas garden.
What was your garden before it was a garden?

It was a wilderness.

If you did nothing in your garden, the weeds, trees, bugs, grasses, animals, would just go wild. Like a teenager whose parents have left him alone while they go on an extended vacation, the wilderness will invite everything wild to come on in if there is no one at home to tend

Hortus sanus





Hortus sanus.

Most gardeners recognize hortus sanus when they see it. It is what we want for ourselves, for every gardener. It is what we hope for, plan for, work for, and plant for.

Literally translated hortus sanus is Latin for “garden healthy” or “garden sane”

Most gardeners want a healthy garden. Most gardeners want a healthy garden without giving up their own sanity to get it.