Gardening is one of the few areas of life in which we get to build upon labors of the past and start anew.

In last month’s column, we reimagined our gardens as little Utopias—spaces for us to manifest our deepest values and desires. Now that our catalogs are dog-eared and our imaginations ignited, it’s time to put our pens to paper and decide what turning our values into harvests might actually look like.

Simplifying the task

I find the best things in life are both profound and simple. For example, facilitating life is a profound endeavor, but it’s easy to forget that growing food is also incredibly simple.

If planning your garden means choosing seeds based solely on the pretty pictures from your catalogs—great! There’s no rule that says you need to know what you’re doing. And if randomly tossing seeds on the ground is what gets you into the garden for the first time (I’m speaking from experience here), then I’m all for it.

Detailed garden planning helps us maximize resources, optimize space and helps us learn and grow as gardeners. There are no rules as long as your plan works for you.

But if you like rules…

There are many great resources to manifest our desires into a garden. Here are a few foundational guidelines:

Consider your space. Understand the possibilities and limits of the space available to you. Work with your environment, not against it. Accept the shady spots as a place to grow greens and tender herbs, the rocky soils to plant lavender or columbines and the cement as a home for potted plants.

Understand your needs. If raised beds will make gardening more enjoyable for you, incorporate them into your plans. By prioritizing your joy and wellbeing, your garden will likely be more bountiful and rewarding.

Succession. Optimize your space by choosing a diverse mix of crops. Choose cold-season and quick-growing plants to extend the season, fill in gaps and keep soils covered and productive. Sow small amounts of quick-growing crops regularly to enjoy harvests throughout the season. Think about the vertical space as much as the ground area, and consider pairing different plants that will grow together harmoniously.

Trust your intuition. There’s so much to gardening that’s intuitive. The more we trust our intuition, the better gardeners we become. A little research can help us turn our inklings into solid plans and our tiny curiosities into big discoveries.