How about container gardening? Seems a shame to give up something that seems like you enjoy!

Or a small raised bed? It'd be better than nothing. Good luck whatever you choose. When I couldn't have a garden, I liked to drive around town and admire other people's pretty flowers. It helped, but not enough to squelch my yearning for my own. It might help, somehow. Maybe you could find a home with a nice flowerbed near your house and you could strike up a conversation to hear how they succeeded. Maybe you just need the right plant for your soil. At my old house I hated how almost boggy and shady one of my flower garden was, and in the end, after finding what worked (lobelia, pansies, galium, iris pseudacorus, violets... I could go on), it became my favorite. Once I quit fighting the bed, it won ;)

Threads like this make me appreciate how blessed I was to start in an area with good soil - mainly built up that way by leaving the earth to do its thing. Have you ever looked into "cover crops"? I don't know all the science behind it, but I understand it can help. And I will second what kcandmilo mentioned - container gardening is definitely something to consider.

I don't think you have to give up gardening because of cr*ppy soil if you enjoy it! The above two suggestions of raised beds and container gardening are good ones.

Or, enlist the help of a professional if you are able to afford it - you don't have to do all the heavy work. You say you can't dig a hole more than a few inches -- a good landscaper with the big gun equipment can transform your beds and know not only how to incorporate amended soil with native soil to avoid drainage issues but also which plants are good choices for the conditions you have. I've hired companies to do bed work a couple of times now, and when they're done I get in there and start planting myself -- you don't have to have them plant the plants for you, you can hire them for the heavy work and take over from there.

Cover cropping is an interesting suggestion -- I did that in my front yard for a couple of winters. Most of the usual crops will want full sun, or at least good partial sun. And you need to be somewhere free of strict landscaping regulations. I got away with growing cereal rye and hairy vetch in my yard, though I did get cited by the city for it when it was 4-5 feet tall. Fortunately the notice came the week I had planned to cut it down anyway, so there was no second notice and no fine.

One fairly easy cover crop is buckwheat. In my zone you can grow two crops of it in a summer, cutting it down when it's in flower and leaving the residue on the ground to decompose. It doesn't get crazy tall and the growth is tender so that it's easy to cut down. I think it looks rather nice. Here it is the summer before I planted my hell strip:

It took maybe 20 minutes to cut it down with a Dutch hoe:

I remember a few years ago, my friend who lives in suburbia where it is lawn central and everyone wants a great looking lawn. One of the neighbours had a really patchy lawn, and they pulled up a lot of the grass and everyone thought they were re-sodding or sowing grass. Instead what came up looked even worse - like total weeds. After that season was over - the next season up came the perfect grass - the best lawn on the street.

They had used a cover croup of legumes.

One of the good things about gardening is that you can do as little or as much of it as you choose. Long ago we used to raise a big vegetable garden every year and freeze all our vegetables for the winter. We also had a circular bed of annual flowers in the front yard during those summers. Then we became busier for a number of years/decades, but during that time I always grew a few tomato plants every year and we had fresh tomatoes each summer. I also grew gladiolas next to the house. Now we have more time on our hands, and I have created perennial flower beds, a small vegetable patch, and am re-foresting patches of our land with trees. I am blessed with good soil, but if I weren't I would absolutely be growing things in containers or raised beds or both. (I've never seen much sense in raised beds, but your yard sounds like the poster child for a raised bed! Raised beds and containers are ideal for places with poor soil.) If you enjoy watching things grow, then you can garden. Your garden need not look like the royal botanical gardens; it can be as small as a potted plant on a windowsill. The enjoyment of watching things grow is not the sole province of gardeners with elaborate gardens and great soil.

I've quit gardening a few times. Bugs or heat or drought or even tornado will put me over the edge for a few hours to as long as a couple weeks. Unfortunately I'm an addict, so it never lasts.

Unless you are surrounded by a barren wasteland there will likely be something growable without too much pain. Being of the lazy sort I'd recommend a thick mulch for weeds and then planting shallowly into the mulch, even if it means butterflying the root ball and then dumping a bag or shovelful of topsoil to cover. If you can get a load of compost or have grass clippings or collected leaves, you'd be amazed at how much good a layer of that will do just thrown on top of the soil (even uncomposted). Earthworms will do the work for you, I'm 100% against doing the soil turning myself.

me too...i even say i'm not going to plant anything this year....my friends and neighbors just start talking about plants or i listen to a tv/radio show on gardening and i'm back again my problem is similiar to yours, dirt called gumbo-almost as hard as concrete, takes two days for a 15 minute rainfall to sink in.....so far i've spent about 500 dollars on rose soil, which i just pile up on top to cardboard on top of the gumbo, about 18 inches deep so far, surrounded with moss rock, another almost 1000 bucks and back breaking days of work, every year i top dress with compost and some really good organic fertilizer, then i have an irrigation system, with parts and pieces from lowe's, cause water just goes straight through the rose soil, i've planted about a dozen tea roses (old garden type) and have about 6 left, herbs seem to like my garden bed better than anything oh wait i think the bermuda grass likes it best of all.... i also have 6 or 8 huge pots for tomatoes and okra and right now they have onions in them.....with another irrigation system....i still have 2 out of 5 citrus trees left after 20 degree weather for 3 days and hurricane harvey drowned two of them, but i think it's in my blood so i'll just try to hang on to my lifelong hobby

For me, this decision to quit was less about "finding the right plant", and more about not being able to grow what I wanted (and for me this was mostly roses). Gardening is a labor of love, and if you don't love what you're doing what's the point? You gotta pick your battles, and I see this as a battle I'm never going to win.

My thought is what are the native plants in your area? Surely there are some that are worthy in your garden.

Perhaps you're right nicholsworth55. Maybe my heart's just not in it right now. And I know I'll never be able to grow everything, but for me it's not just one plant that I'm not able to grow. I have other favorites like lupines, delphiniums, gladiolus (I've actually tried to grow these in pots several times but the bulbs get DEVOURED by some unknown creature EVERY TIME) etc that I will never in a million years be able to grow in my soil. But a long time ago I decided that instead of collecting plants I would pick a few plants that I really liked and try to grow them. At that time I didn't know as much about caring for plants as I do now. Now that I know more about their cultural requirements I've simply accepted the fact that I can't grow what I like. I will continue to care for what I have in my yard (I'm not just gonna let them die or anything like that), but I've pretty much given up on having the perennial border/mixed border of my dreams.

Instead of focusing on plants you like that are sure to fail, why go with the conditions and choose plants that love sandy soil? There are quite a few.

I'm in Oklahoma where red hard clay is the norm unless you haul in topsoil. Around here there is a saying "We're red dirt ready". This actually means clay.

We brought in several tons of sand and have been quite successful in growing lots of plants in sand, I did it on purpose because I wanted the fast drainage and the dry, lean conditions, the sand is about 6 to 10 inches deep depending on where you are in the yard. These are plants I would not otherwise be able to grow. Lavender, Russian Sage, Salvias and many other perennials that need or like good quick drainage love very sandy soil and there are many natives to choose from. I was wanting to grow Southwestern natives which do quite well along with several nice prairie natives and all kinds of grasses. We took out the whole lawn so the entire lot is deep sand up front.

When we went to Dolese's to order the sand to be trucked in, I noticed at the base of each giant sand hill there were lots of plants growing beautifully up to about 5 feet high around the base of the piles. They were thriving and blooming beautifully.

One thing I really like is how easy it is to dig or move plants. The roots really take off because there is no resistance or packing so I get nice healthy plants with good roots systems and I can walk around out there no matter how much rain we've had without worrying about packing the soil. I've got plants out back where its regular soil that don't do nearly as well as up front where the sand is deep. A couple of tamps with a shovel and a whole plant pulls out with all the roots in tact, just shake off the sand and you can transplant it. Its also easy to weed and water, the water soaks in quick and deep and weeds pull right out. In the past with the 'dirt' it was very difficult to get the water to soak in beyond 2 or 3 inches in summer and would dry out much quicker than the sand which stays moist down deep.

We used river rock on top as a mulch. Its the best, most successful garden I have ever had; I get lots of comments from people passing by. If we moved, I'd really have to have a couple of dump truck loads of sand brought in, I'm spoiled now.

http://www.prairienursery.com/store/native-plants/for-dry-sandy-soils

https://www.flowerpotman.com/plants-for-soil-type-and-conditions/plants-for-sandy-soil/

Texasranger2 thank you for your kind words. Just forget I even brought up that second property (the one with the sandy soil). It doesn't belong to me and I only go up there with my family a limited number of times every year. There are also many other issues with this property that I don't have the patience to deal with. Part of the property is a field that floods many times throughout the year (it's on a low spot) even though it's sandy soil. The rest of the property is wooded and I don't even know what I'd put there. There are also black walnut trees and poison ivy EVERYWHERE on this property and I don't want to deal with this at all (the poison ivy especially makes me not want to garden here at all). The only area I'd even consider gardening is near the house, but again it's beach sand and it is extremely challenging. I've seen sandy soil that's actually half decent. Sandy soil with a moderate amount of silt and clay to it, and I wouldn't mind gardening in it. Unfortunately this is not the case. The people who owned this property before my family had planted a row of fruit trees on it (mostly apples and peaches) and I had to cut down 2 of them this year that were COMPLETELY dead. Of the few peach and apple trees that remain on that property, I was not impressed with what we harvested from them this year at all. They're not very big and healthy and they are clearly suffering and dying from a lack of water and nutrition (beach sand) and I know they will require constant care throughout the year to even stand a chance of surviving (something I will not be able to do because I'm not up there enough). I'm sorry for even bringing this up. That whole property is just a can of worms I don't wanna open.

There are some cool plants that thrive in sand, look to see what's growing around the area. Look into lupinus perennis, monarda punctata, bearberry, many grasses and shrubs would love a sandy, moist soil.

Have to agree with floral. As the saying goes, life gives you a lemon, make lemonade. Read any of the forums on Gardenweb, and you will often see gardeners trying to grow things against the odds, with varying degrees of success and often failure. Sometimes it is not worth the battle if what you want is so different than the reality of what you have and can work with.

Not everyone is a gardener and that's totally fine. I don't quite believe that the soil is the issue -that can be worked and amended. I do believe that the amount of work required to make your conditions work for your vision is not your idea of a good time.

I think you enjoy gardens and flowers and I encourage you to nurture that by visiting gardens or parks and enjoying being outside with a beautiful cultivated backdrop. Otherwise, I would encourage you to merely plant what is low maintenance and effective for curb appeal and move on to the things in your life that you really enjoy.

not being able to grow what I wanted

I totally hear ya! I'd really like to grow what I want, not what deer won't eat :(

I’d quit if the gardening became a constant source of frustration. It’s supposed to be a hobby that provides distraction for the no-fun, mandatory things that grownups do. There’s sewing, cooking, book clubs...

but If you can’t shake the love for pretty plants, container gardening might be your answer.

PS: hope this makes you feel better, falls in the frustration category. I bought an expensive conifer and since nobody grew it in my area, unk. If it’d make it in my garden. Well, it did and I was proud/pleased with my care of it. Hurricane Harvey drowned & killed it. All that work down the drain....it happens to novices and the most seasoned.

I commiserate. I am at a point where I am tired of gardening but it is more about the fact that my life is taking weird turns and keeping going in the same direction is taking more work than I can do. I would rather take a walk but I have all these plants to plant that I raised from seed and that means more dirt to be brought in more holes to dig and more cans of water to carry. SO< I am giving a bunch of plants away to some neighbors that just moved in. Maybe this is just a phase. I am more excited about helping them garden than working in my garden. So it goes.

Sometimes I thing my malaise is because I am alone in my gardening, burt that used to be the draw . I love being alone and doing stuff and feeling and seeing the little things and the wind and sun in my garden. I now wish I had company, so I guess I am off to my neighbors house. It kind of solves the problem.

Finding plants that love clay and sand is easy . that is just opening the eyes and cracking the books. Finding the wish to get the hose to soften the clay and pick to work the dirt is hard. A friend of mine just tossed a bunch of composted shredded hardwood mulch ontop of her land , walked away in disgust and came back a year later and found things workable. She tilled and planted. The bugs did her work for her.

I never grew a plant or sowed a single seed until I was in my late 30s. Gardening simply did not exist...and amazingly, I had a full and joyful life doing carpentry, working with textile and yarn, glass and electronics. painting, drawing and printing (ceramics was a bust though as I could not bear the clay on my hands)...but, all these things I loved, along with reading, family, my dogs etc.etc. There are a million ways to spend your time. Some of it, we can't get out of - work, dependents, community, exercise and so forth and some of it we pick up for a while and lose interest. Occasionally, we land on something which really triggers something profound (and I suspect gardening was a possible contender for many of us) and we laugh in the face of adversity and plod on against any odds. Other things are just too time consuming, difficult and no matter how much we put into it, we just don't get where we want to be (playing violin was one of mine...and, my god, I stuck at that for over a decade)...and give it up without a backwards glance...although sometimes with a wistful regret. Some things, especially self-improving things such as learning Mandarin or running, don't even last the week.

So, what I am tortuously labouring to say is don't fret, take time off - a season or forever, circumstances change, take up amateur theatre of Latin American dancing. We only get one life and limited time and choice so read about other people's gardens, go and look at them (because they are lovely) and see what else life has to offer for a bit.

No one likes to say that there is a lot of freedom in lowered expectations. Don't garden, go for a swim, go on an extended trip to New Zealand and let that garden fry in the Texas sun......AND if you don't start that garden , you will never experience the loss. I keep telling myself that but I am long past that state in my life. I might still take that three month trip to visit my sister down under, and take the demise of my garden as a price and a challenge. Most will rise from the ashes because it is designed that way. I have burnt the life out of this garden more than once. It is a good lesson in humility and too much attachment.

Given my interest in plants one of the things which surprises visitors is that I have a microscopic garden. It's intentional. I don't ever want the garden to become a duty,

I headed into last year (2017) with the best of intentions, and what I thought would be an amazing gardening year. Only to find I was sadly mistaken. Drama with work. Drama with relationships. Drama with depression. Drama with house (roof blew off in windstorms). Drama with garden. Garden drama started off innocently enough (the windstorms which blew off the roof also blew down my arbour, onto which was my beloved clematis - a central piece in my garden for me. But 2017, the strange thing was that I was like I was a victim of success. I had worked hard the previous year on cutting back, defining, dividing...and then 2017 comes and everything exploded triple time...and I was already tired with all the drama of the year, and all I could see was this out of control thing I had created that was exhausting the life out of me.

I took a time out from many of the things I had committed to - or finished up my commitments and did NOT recommit. No garden tours, parties and all that. I needed to concentrate on getting things back in order. I am still working on this. But I can say it was off to a good start when I found a "good for now arbour" and wound up the cle old clematis branches around it - and the thing picked right up and sent out great new growth, which gives me hope for next season. And taking that year off really has given me much more excitement for the new season and a certain level headedness and fresh perspective.

Perhaps it's time to let your garden go fallow and restore your energy!

Nature establishes plant communities on severe soils including even bare rock by piling organic debris onto them.

In the garden this is called mulching.

Oh, that's so sad! Don't give up on trying to garden. Start a small garden in containers or in a window box. I've killed my fair of plants through neglect, wrong plant in the wrong spot, or they've died off from our cold winters. I just tried again and again until I figured out what worked. Maybe check with your neighbors to see what they grow. Check out the local garden club and/or publications. Have fun and good luck!

What I've learned about gardening over the years is that it's not this "skill" that people claim it to be. You need to have basic knowledge about the kinds of plants that grow well in your area and can survive your winters, but other than that it's entirely dependent on your soil. Your yard either has the conditions needed to grow something or it doesn't. I can't stand when people preach at me about everything I need to do to improve my garden when they have loam soil. When you have loam, you can plant pretty much anything you want, ignore it all year and it will still thrive (I'm not counting bugs or diseases because this is something that EVERYONE deals with regardless of their soil type).

I have lived in red alkaline clay ( they call it "Red Death") on one side of my house and caliche , rock and limestone on the other. I have never had Loam soil, ever, ever. We make fun of the stuff people call soil. Hell, most of us don't even have soil. it goes straight to bed rock and nasty marl.. I hope I am not preaching. Ammended, the red death grows lots. It is much more nutritious than my caliche limestone marl/rubble on the other side of my home. My wild grasses are great at breaking the clay up and taking humous down into it. It is pretty sticky stuff and hard in the summer. I have never tried to grow roses in it. I would make a raised bed for them if I ever did. Right now I have cowpen daisies, texas plains parsley, standing cypress , Yaupon, silphium gracile, Yucca , esperanza, opuntia robusta, gaillardia. I add tons of compost, shredded hardwood mulch, decomposed granite and expanded shale if I am feeling wealthy that day.

There is a lot of ways to amend clay, but one has to avail oneself of the knowledge , work on the skill which is mostly the will to sweat it out. I can really understand if you feel lacking in the will. Right now, I am not far from you. I am exercising lowered expectations and letting things grow wild. Good luck on what ever you do . We gotta do what we do. Don't beat yourself up over it. If you are not enjoying it , why partake of it.

I disagree that gardening is not a skill. It's as much a skill as anything else out there.

Gardening is indeed a skill!! And an art! And yes, soil has a great deal to do with one's success in gardening but any soil can be improved. Few of us have ever started with an "ideal" loamy soil.......that tends not to exist naturally much outside of textbooks :-)) But it can be encouraged to develop over time with care, effort and regular amending.

In my business, I encounter all manner of soil types, from very heavy, boggy clay to rocky glacial till to very fast draining and nutrient poor sandy soils. And I have created gardens that can suit them all. Or one can resort to raised planting areas or berms of imported "good" soil or try container gardening, where you can tailor the soil needs to the plant.

I understand the degree of frustration encountered when dealing with a 'bad' soil but plants can and do grow just about anywhere in any kind of soil condition, so it is a matter of understanding your soil and its deficiencies and, if not willing to invest the effort to improve it, researching the types of plants that will tolerate those conditions. I assure you, they DO exist!

I'm just curious, can you grow lupines in sandy soil (that's also in a low spot and sometimes floods)? I may try planting some this year if I can get some seeds.

This is about so much more than not being able to grow what I want. My soil is just an absolute nightmare to work with. I'm tired of trying to pull weeds and the roots breaking before I get the entire thing out. I've pulled weeds in other people's gardens (who have soil that's actually workable) and I actually enjoyed it because I felt like I was getting something done. When I pull a weed in my yard I know I'll probably be back (dealing with the EXACT SAME PLANT) in a week or so because I can't get the entire root out.

And no offense but you haven't exactly given a counter argument. You're just saying "it's a skill" with no basis whatsoever to backup this claim. And loam actually is something you start out with. I can wish for a better ratio of sand, silt and clay all I want but it's NEVER going to happen. I think you're thinking of fertile soils (soils with high organic matter content). Of course I can improve the fertility of my soil but I can't just magically get more silt and sand in my soil. Whether a plant grows well or not is entirely up to mother nature. There's a reason why a farmer in one field can harvest more bushels of corn than another (assuming the fields are the same size and the same variety of corn is planted). It's not because one farmer is more skilled, it's simply because one of them has better soil. Of course rain, insects, disease etc are also factors but for the sake of my argument we'll assume that both fields have the same conditions.

Skill is not just the ability to do something, it is also knowing what to do when and how - in other words, the "expertise".

Actually with some money, and time , one can bring in sand, silt and compost to till into your soil. People do it ALL THE TIME around where I live. Hell around here one is considered lucky if you have clay to play around with. Most are bringing in truckloads of dirt from the bulk soil guy to build up 10" of soil ontop of their limestone. My sister lived on a lava flow. That was hard gardening too, but once amended she had some cool stuff. I am digging out a ditch in solid limestone marl. I am moving that marl to fill in some pot holes in my drive, wheel barrow by wheel barrow. Then I will fill it with dirt and also build a retaining wall so I can deepen the soil. Do I like that I have to do this,..NO, but it is what Is my lot to do. My land is beautiful but it has cr@p for soil. Do I make fun of it ,YES.I have made Marl the name for my inner beyatch (as they say down here). I have jokes about needing teeth protectors for pickaxing and how I want my very own jack hammer for Christmas ( that's not a joke). Do I whine about it? Maybe for short periods of time. Then I remind myself that this is MY CHOICE to do. MY choice to live her, . So, shut my yapper. If I don't like this I can take up theater, scuba diving, rock climbing, penuchle, bridge, map making, knitting, dying and spinning wool. Or I can sit on my back porch and look through my teary foggy eyes with my long island ice tea gripped in my fist and ponder about of what could or should be all afternoon long.

Go ahead and quite gardening. Long extended whining will drive those around you nuts . Find something that gives you happiness and serenity , if soil amending is not your cup of tea, or MOVE to that perfect loamy lot. You might find ir infested with crazy ants and rattlesnakes.