“How do you know the plant is established?”
That is one of the more common questions that I get asked when I teach beginner-gardeners about the joy of miniature gardening.
Did you know that plants can only do one thing at a time?
Have you ever seen a plant multi-task?
Visions of plants texting, doing the laundry, having a conversation while cooking dinner come to mind, but, that’s not what I mean. :o)


Plants can only do one thing at a time. When they do that one thing, they put all their energy into it. They get it done so they can move on to the next thing on their agenda: rooting, growing leaves, flower and fruiting, going to seed – all in the name of self-preservation via propagating.
While this is a very broad way of describing how plants grow, they basically do what they need to do in order to survive.
Why don’t we do that?

Garden as Metaphor
I’ve been struggling for years with getting an inground miniature garden together as a study project for the Miniature Garden Society. My previous attempts at our rental in West Seattle worked out wonderfully – but I didn’t document the process while we were building and maintaining them – we just enjoyed them. But, I needed to dig much deeper (punny!) for the MGS in order be any kind of help to my fellow miniature gardeners.
So, at our home that we bought in 2010, my previous attempts at trying to get something growing nicely inground always fell by the wayside. I’m supposed to be the expert!
But then I focused. I didn’t make any other miniature gardens for two seasons, I just focused on my inground garden.
And it worked. Not only do I have a very fun miniature garden world to play with and enjoy, I’ve got my insight, my process photos, my troubleshooting and the entire thing documented and, I must say, it’s going to more than a few new pages for the Miniature Garden Society.
How fun is that?
But perhaps I should have acted more like a plant.

(See our Mini Patio Mix Kit, up on our Two Green Thumbs’ online store here.)
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