I enjoy my garden immensely, and everything that comes with it. I like planting, mulching, watering, weeding-you get the best results with hard work. But it is important to take time out and enjoy : ) Cant wait to start digging in the dirt in May. For me my garden is soothing, and one of my favorite places to be. Even the young plants, I imagine in a few years how fabulous they'll look, and it makes everything worth it.

Jen

I enjoy both. I love to sit and gaze or wander around my garden. And I love to work in and mess with my garden. Both are satisfying. But I do find that gardening is never done. I am always moving or changing things or trying new plants. I hope to be gardening until they plant ME!
Kathy

Both. And in almost equal measure. This is an old garden, started decades before it became "mine" and I'm still planning on years of work and enjoyment. Since stumbling on this website last fall, I've gone back through many of the threads and kept a notebook of things to try this coming season. Can't wait!

Good question!

I'd have to say both also. I will admit it's hard to just *sit* and enjoy, although I can do that at the end of the day on a summer's evening. But I often just can't help myself and, like you said, Yeona, you see a weed that needs to be pulled, or a plant that needs to be staked, etc.

I find the best way to enjoy my garden without actually gardening at that moment is to dress appropriately. If I'm in good clothes, or even just casual clothes that I don't want to get dirty or kneel in or rip, etc., I am much better at sitting and enjoying, lol! If I'm dressed in old jeans and a t-shirt, well, then I'll be working in no time - but luckily, I'll still be enjoying it!

I will add that I enjoy my garden just by taking a walk around it before work. I don't get a lot of time to spend then, but I know going out there that I can't work in it, and so I can enjoy it guilt-free!

:)
Dee

My newest garden is in the direct pathway to my garage. It was planned so that I would walk thru and enjoy it both coming and going from work. The most relaxing minutes of my day are my trips thru the garden. On the other hand, I have no furniture there. If there is extra time to spend, I'm tweaking this or that; pulling a weed, cutting back a stalk, tying up a plant that's leaning on a neighbor, or taking photos.

I love doing both. I have a bench in the front yard where I can just sit and relax, and some chairs in the back yard, but I'm the most likely to just admire the garden view from the large windows in the house. It's pleasant to look out at my yard, and watch the birds at the feeders and the combinations of the flowers and shrubs etc.

I find the manual labor of gardening to be peaceful and relaxing. It's a pretty even balance (in my mind): a moderate bit of steady work equals lots of pleasure in viewing the garden in all seasons. I feel better doing smaller tasks almost daily spring through fall than going through binges of hard work for a whole afternoon or day less often. (Unless I've got a big project going on, like the rock walls and garden paths from the past year and a half, which are done now, thank goodness!) This year I plan on fine-tuning combinations and just ENJOYING the garden more than last year. Last year was tough (too much to go into now), and I didn't feel like I got to sit back and just BE in the garden. I'm looking forward to peaceful times in the yard this year.

Laurel

Both.I enjoy walking through the yard just to see what has popped up or is in bud or bloom. But I also love playing in the dirt, planting, mulching, weeding, etc. I think I enjoy the gardening as much or more than the garden. When spring finally starts to peek out around here I get a nearly uncontrollable urge to start digging in the dirt.

Great question, Yeona! I don't think you really need to sit still to say you're enjoying your garden, though. I love being in the garden, whether I'm working or relaxing.

I also enjoy the planning, the assessing, reading about plants and design, going to botanic gardens, and participating in garden web.

Unlike digger, it does not help me at all to be dressed appropriately; I have no qualms about mowing in my party shoes or getting compost on my office clothes, no matter how hard I try to be careful.

LOL, dtd, you must have a bigger wardrobe than I do! I mean, I will do a bit of deadheading, or maybe even staking, if I'm in my work clothes (by that I mean my real job clothes, not garden work clothes) but for the most part I'm always worried about ruining them.

Heck, I don't even like to eat when I'm dressed well. Afraid of slopping something down the front of me. I think it stems from my total aversion to shopping. If I take care of my clothes, I won't have to go to the mall to get new ones, lol! I'd much rather be enjoying/working in my garden than going shopping!

:)
Dee

Like Laurel, I appreciate it both ways. Although I don't have nearly as much time to work in my garden as I'd like, the time I can devote to it is very healing in both an emotional and a physical sense. There is nothing quite so therapeutic as pulling weeds with the sun on one's back and the birds twittering close by, letting your mind wander. Even on the days when I can't squeeze out any time for garden chores, I do the rounds anyway, checking for signs of new growth or flowering and making sure everything is the way it should be.

Now that I'm not as young as I used to be, I do take more breaks and rest on a bench for awhile before tackling another project, but I find that I can't sit for too long. I get antsy and need to attend to something soon. For me enjoying the gardening process IS enjoying my garden. I don't find it to be an either/or situation.

After I get my coffee in the morning and put on my sweatpants I walk the garden. All the way around up to the front of the house for the newspaper. I notice whats opening up thats new and make mental notes about things to do and somedays I don't see any tasks but notice nothing but beauty. The birds chirping, the sun just coming up, wetness in the air. Thats my favorite time.

I do and enjoy both but every morning, 365 days, I make this walk. Can't imagine starting the day any other way.

Ah, yes, that daily walk through the garden, regardeless of the weather, is the centerpiece of my life. . .
Gardengal found the perfect word when she mentioned
"process" - the "doing" and the "assessing" are all wrapped
as one, at least for me! Even as I'm sitting in one spot
or another, albeit relaxing, at the same time I'm surveying
the garden in front of me, planning, tweaking, editing. . .
Clearly, I must WANT to sit down and enjoy my garden - in
a relatively small landscape (50'x200') there are no less
than eleven places to sit!

I have a hard time just sitting still I guess, so if I'm out there I'm working or at least doing something. I find all the activity so relaxing that I can't complain in the least. I just get so much satisfaction from all gardening activities. I take that back. I hate cutting grass, so I got rid of almost all of it years ago. Over the years, I've constantly looked for ways to make the least desirable tasks easier or just go away. I think I've done a good job at that.

About the only time I can just look at the garden is when I'm inside looking out. That's kind of fun.

Kevin

Both for me, and this time of year, I'm missing both equally.

Oh I enjoy both but probably spend the majority of my time gardening. During garden season I'm rarely clean even when I wear good clothes. My entire yard is one big garden with paths everywhere so I'm usually hard pressed to get from one place to another without getting sidetracked. I have found though the best way to force yourself to sit and enjoy your garden is to invite other gardeners over to sit and enjoy it with you. It also forces you to get to all those clean up chores that tend to get pushed to the end of the to-do list.

Sue

After growing this new yard and gardens for five years, I found I finally got to enjoy it more last year. I'm still always fiddling in it, but I did have much more quiet appreciation time in my garden last summer. I think it's because I've finally implemented all the things I wanted to do to control weeds (all the mulching, the gravel paths, etc.) and because my trees and plants are getting bigger and more established. I just looked at photos from four and five years ago, and it's shocking how much my trees have grown! I love it.

I'm afraid my DH doesn't call me the every changing gardener for nothing. I love to putter in the garden and have even been yelled at by company for bending down to pull out a weed when they are visiting! Having said that though I do enjoy my gardens as well. At our old house you had to make an effort to go out to see most of the gardens as our large raised deck hid everything from view when inside or just sitting in the shaded part of the deck. So at the new house everything was designed at ground levels and my first gardens completely wrap my house. I can see some part of the garden no matter where I am inside or outside of the house. And since I live outside from spring to fall I get to enjoy and play often.

Well, the party line answer is clearly both, and obviously for me too, there is enjoyment of the process and the results. I think that must be true for any gardener who is involved in the making of their own garden space and who isn't getting paid for doing it.

But I find that as I get older and farther down the garden path, I would like to enjoy the results more, and I find that the process itself can sometimes be tedious, expensive, require too much patience, and overwhelming. So I am going to be brutally honest here -- while I enjoy the work of gardening to some extent, if I could hire more people to do more things for me and just enjoy the results myself, I would do it. The problem is that, for the most part, if you are a real plant geek like I am (and a whole lot of others who responded above), you can't really hire people to arrange plants for you in the way you want them. So there is a certain amount that you have to be involved with yourself.

Being involved again in the creation of a new garden, and having left a mature one, I have to say that so far, I enjoyed the mature one more. The last few years I spent there I did work a lot in the garden still, of course, but the proportion of time spent just enjoying the garden was greater. That doesn't mean that I was sitting when I enjoyed it. It doesn't mean that I didn't pull a weed or two when I walked with a glass of wine in the evening.

But after 20 years working on that space, the garden felt "finished" to a great extent. That doesn't mean that there would never be anything new. But the garden had a certain cohesiveness that is certainly lacking in my new garden. It also had as much seasonal interest as I could pack into 2/3 acre in my rotten climate. So, weather permitting, the garden always had moments of great beauty and enjoyment for me.

But then again, I know that one of the reasons the garden meant so much to me is that I had spent 20 years making it. I had watched the trees, shrubs, perennials that I had planted get moved from one place to anohter (NAY he says, "I MOVED them from one place to another"...) until they finally found a place that they (and I) liked.

Still garden making takes patience, and it is hard in the early stages not to want more results, with less work at garden making.

I think that's one reason why, relatively speaking, I did not take many pictures of the new garden this year -- in the last year I was at my old place I took over a thousand, this year less than 100. A reflection that the garden was more about process than results, so far.

One of the greatest times of garden enjoyment I ever remember in my old garden was after a big garden tour. The weeds were all pulled, the plants all relatively pristine (it was mid-June), the crowds were gone, my family and the dog were gone, the walks and drives all neat and clean, no cars or other distractions to be seen. Then I walked through and enjoyed my own garden, for a couple of hours, nobody but me and the hummingbirds and butterflies. One of the best times of garden enjoyment I ever had, along with very early foggy mornings and late summer evenings. Give me more of those, and less back-breaking work, any day....

I was just reading David's post and remembering something. When I was little I would help my dad in the garden. He was always moving things. He would tell me that people who garden have patience and are usually good people and so throughout my life to try to make friends with gardeners and to always have some kind of garden.

Because we can wait to see something grow (even though we don't really want to), we nurture our plants thru their stages of life. He would say there is something so special about gardening and gardeners even if your garden is only 1 container on your windowsill and you live in the city.

It is work, whether you have a large garden or a small one. But it takes a certain special character to be able to do it every year - patient, nurturing and appreciative of natural beauty. I've found that to be true for the most part. I know I'm not saying it quite as eloquently as dad but I hope the message still comes across.

When I started my garden some 40 years ago it was 90% work and 10% enjoyment. Now that it is mature, it is 905 enjoyment and 10% work. I like to be outdoors, I like to wander all the paths through the garden not only to see what may be emerging from the cold, cold earth, but simply to drink it all in. I wander around with my pruners in my hip pocket enjoying life and if I see a wayward or dead branch will cut it off. As I walk around I make mental notes as to what I might transplant, what seeds need to be picked, what needs to be pinched, what needs to be deheaded. And sometimes I actually get around to it. It often amazes me and pleases me no end as to what I have created. It is my recreation. I like to tell people that it is my golf game with one difference. A walk through the garden is not "a walk wasted" as Mark Twin is reputed to have said

So many wonderful posts here.

Like aachenelf, I find I can't sit still. I get excited to get back up, go smell something, care for something.

The only time I can enjoy my garden when not "gardening" is when I am distracted by something else... like birdwatching or entertaining... but most of the time I've got pruners in one hand and maybe a cup of coffee in the other and it's almost the coffee that gets set down.

I must admit, I rarely just enjoy my garden. I always see something that needs to be done, a weed that needs to go, a dry spot that needs watering, etc. and the list goes on.

But, for me, that is the enjoyment. At my age, you must be careful not to just sit and enjoy anything! Too much sitting and I might not be able to get up.

I do enjoy watching the butterflies and hummingbirds hovering about or the nice comments from friends or seeing a new plant come into its own. I try to add something new each year.

Still lots of fun in the planning, growing from seed, getting new things, etc.

The pictures are a wonderful aid to enjoyment. Sometimes I look back and think how beautiful something was that didn't really impress me when I was taking the picture! Digital cameras are a wonderful aide.