How Should We Measure Success in a Garden?

28.07.2023 - 14:41 / treehugger.com / Elizabeth Waddington

Are you successful in your garden? This is a question that is not as easy to answer as you might think. I have been thinking lately about how we should measure success in a garden and why it is important to answer this question as a sustainable gardener.

You might wonder why we need to think about success in a garden at all. Why do we need to think about things in terms of successes or failures? Can't we just enjoy our gardens and our gardening without having to know how well we are doing?

Of course, gardening is not always about results. Often, we may simply enjoy growing a little of our own food or some pretty flowers without thinking too much about how well things are going.

But measuring success can be important because it can help us to understand our goals and how we are measuring up against those goals. It can help us to see more clearly what has worked and what has not in our gardens and to dictate our course moving forwards.

By measuring our success, we can see where we, as gardeners, are truly helping to make our world a better place and also where we may be falling short.

Measuring success can also help to encourage us—helping us to avoid that well-known slump when things do not always go according to plan. Seeing what we have done right and where we have succeeded can make sure we remain inspired and excited about what we are doing in our gardens.

In order to measure success, we first need to determine what we mean by success. We need to ask ourselves what it means for something to go right and the metrics by which we can determine whether or not we are heading in the correct direction.

Success in a garden will mean different things to different people. We might think about success in terms of the