When I watch videos of people with these amazing gardens, I always wonder… how do they do it while working full-time? A few questions for fellow gardeners:
Is gardening your full-time job?
How big is your garden (acres, raised beds, containers, etc.)?
How much time do you spend each week maintaining it?
@Koa
I feel this. If someone’s got a ‘perfect’ garden and a massive social media following, I always wonder what’s just outside the camera frame. Maybe they do have a flawless setup… or maybe they have a whole team behind the scenes.
Or maybe you just need to buy the ‘must-have’ product they’re promoting.
Either way, happy gardening! Your day one won’t look like someone’s day 100, and honestly, learning is half the fun!
My mom had a solid 0.25-0.5 acre garden, depending on which house we lived in when I was a kid. She worked a full-time job, came home, showered, ate dinner, then spent every evening out in the garden until dark. Weekends were full-on gardening days.
As a kid, I thought she just loved it, but later I realized she was doing it to help put food on the table. We ate a lot from that garden.
So yeah, a great garden takes a lot of time and effort. Definitely not something you perfect in your first couple of years!
The biggest factors in my garden are time and experience. I have five shrub/perennial gardens, most of them over 10 years old. That’s key—established plants don’t need as much maintenance.
Spring is the busiest time (April-June for me, zone 6A). That’s when I handle planting, mulching, fertilizing, and pruning. Once that’s done, it’s mostly weeding and watering.
Biggest lesson? Get to weeds early. I know exactly when the worst ones sprout, and if I pull them fast, I barely have to deal with them the rest of the season.
Once summer hits, I spend maybe a few hours a week on maintenance—watering if needed, keeping things trimmed, and mowing. The workload definitely depends on how well you prepare in spring.
A lot of effort goes into setting up a productive vegetable or balcony garden—watering, pruning, end-of-season cleanup, etc.
That said, you can decide how much effort to put in. Some people go for a perfectly curated, structured look… I just let my herbs grow wild and enjoy my chaotic tomato plants.
I always wonder how many of these ‘perfect garden’ people work from home, are stay-at-home, or have landscapers doing the grunt work.
My uncle used to do landscaping for the ultra-rich in Naples, FL, and let’s just say… a lot of ‘self-sufficient’ gardeners have a crew handling the heavy lifting.
My garden looks amazing sometimes, like complete chaos most of the time, and absolutely awful when pests or weather ruin everything.
I work full-time and have chronic illnesses, so I try to spend 5-10 hours each weekend maintaining things. My setup: raised veggie beds, fruit trees, berry bushes, flower beds, and about 1/3 acre of lawn.
Long-term goal? Replace as much lawn as possible with native shrubs/perennials to cut down on mowing. Unfortunately, that currently means more mowing and weeding to clear out the grass.
Also, I’m always amazed by people with fancy wooden trellises and garden structures. Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to build a halfway decent arbor for my grapevines for two years. Lumber is so expensive!
I have about ¾ of an acre. If I spend a few minutes a day keeping up with things, it’s super easy. But if I slack off for a couple of weeks? Absolute jungle.