Back in the very first days of planting my last garden – a garden I would live with for the next ten years – I wanted thick growth, fast. There was an oasis to be created and patience was in short-supply. Consequently, choices were made that every gardener has made before me, and that each has lived to regret. Not too many years later, the reversal of these decisions made for hours of hard work, made harder by the fact that I was solely responsible for my back-breaking misery.

However, at the time I couldn't be told. I couldn't be told by the books, by the websites, by gardener friends who had committed the same crimes in the past. I was sure that not one of them understood my particular garden and my particular needs.

Well, it turns out, they did. Some truths are universal; but, just like learning not to date the impossibly gorgeous guy with a vintage Land Rover, can only be learned with age.

Years have gone by (and so have gardens), and I in turn have tried to counsel others toward smarter planting patterns when asked what I thought of a new plan.

Predictably perhaps, I have met with the same resistance. We all have our road to walk, and knowing that the hardest learned lessons are perhaps the most valuable, I no longer push the issue.

Instead I ask them to consider waiting a year.

A year is not a long time in the life of a garden. Sure, it's an age-an-a-half when you are trying to potty-train your two-year old, or recovering from a horseback accident, or waiting for your hair to grow back after an unfortunate shearing; but on a planet that counts its birthdays in billions, it is laughably short.

Take your time, live with your space. Invest in a garden bench instead of those ten Leyland cypresses, and watch the patterns of the sun on the house, on the back yard...on the deck. Figure out where your wet spots are and where it's dry more often than not. You may need some privacy on the west side, but not the entire west side. You may want a wind break on the east side, and a break from neighbors on the north.

And then there are the plants that are already in situ – plants you’re ready to take a shovel or chainsaw to. Sheath that sword, and think about it for a year. Trees you might think terrible, may just be doing a bit of good.

Sure we want change. We want to put our stamp on a new home. But moving into a house and immediately cutting down a fully laden fig tree because you "needed a lawn" will only tick off your neighbors who wanted to beg a few figs in September. If you live with that fig for a year you might end up praising the last owner who brought a bit of Italy to the mediocrity of the American suburbs.

Time is precious. And it becomes ever more precious the older we get and the more our back aches. Don’t give your ten-years-from-now-self more reasons to hate you. They’re already annoyed over the decisions you’re making with your 401K. – MW