Special gardens are the ones that reflect the gardener

If you’re starting to have deja vu when looking at gardens, you’re not crazy. Gardens do seem to be looking a lot alike, and it’s not a good thing, even when they are beautiful.

The homogenizing of home gardens might be blamed on social media, where many new gardeners go for inspiration, and rightfully so. Gardens that get a lot of traction on a platform are shared over and over again.

Builder-provided landscapes and homeowner associations certainly are partly to blame. Even when a homeowner wants to create a more imaginative landscape, they are stuck with a less-than-inspiring starting point or hampered by covenants.

But plenty of gardeners who could make any garden they want end up creating something that mimics another garden. And then a neighbor admires that garden and they mimic it as well, and soon a whole bunch of gardens feel more than vaguely reminiscent of the gardens around it.

The problem with the homogenization of gardens isn’t one of a lack of plant diversity, although that’s affected it as well. It’s that gardens that don’t reflect their owners tend to be soulless places that could be designed by some artificial intelligence tool.

Gardens are special when they have interesting features and quirks that represent the tastes and whims of the gardener. In the same space one gardener might go for colorful and bold while another might have a more controlled, subdued garden that is more about tranquility than whimsy.

Beyond the plant varieties and the shapes of beds, gardeners who create a garden for themselves incorporate personal touches along the way. These are the little collectibles with special meaning that wind up sitting on the windowsill of a shed or brightly color plant stakes or an interesting rock placed just so. It might also be the furniture in the garden. Benches may be covered in lichen, freshly oiled teak or bright purple. Each says something about the gardener and the feeling they hope to achieve in their space.

It even comes down to the decisions a gardener makes. Will rampantly reseeding annuals be left, on occasion, to grow in the cracks of a patio, or will any plants that dare to venture out of the garden be pulled?

There is no right way to do it, as long its done to suit the gardener rather than the garden that’s being aspired to.

It’s easy to fall in love with other gardens, in person or through images, but the best gardens are an expression of the gardener, which is not something that can be mimicked elsewhere.

Perhaps a better approach than trying to recreate a garden is to be inspired by small elements that a garden offers and use them as permission to create your own small moments in your garden. They might be quirky or subtle, but above all, they should be you.