'Make Plan, Buy Plants' OR 'Buy Plants, Make Plan'

Too often I buy I a plant ("I read really good stuff about Moringa last week, yay!") and then have no idea what to do with it in my teeny yard.

I wonder if this is how most people roll, or if they are garden planners and draft thorough plans before planting.

I like to plan, then buy seeds or maybe plants.

I am always tempted when walking through the Garden Department where I see so many pretty plants.

That is also like walking through the Ladies Wear at a Department Store.  It is good that I rarely go to that kind of store.

Plan, buy seeds, plan something new, buy more seeds, change plan, buy different seeds, start seeds, make plan, buy transplants, plan, put everything in, write out plan based on what you ended up doing for your records.

It's always SUCH a nice theory to make plans then buy plants.
I claim I'll make plans...
But theory and reality rarely intersect :D

There always can be room made for more plants; at least that is what I tell myself.

Plants first, plan later.

Pearl Sutton wrote:It's always SUCH a nice theory to make plans then buy plants.  

I am a chronic plant rescuer... I worry about people having plants when they have no succession plan.... To save those plants, I have to take cuttings or rootings or air layer, right??? Even if I haven't a blinking clue where/when I will plant them.

At least I celebrate when I do get a plant in the ground, and I really do try to choose a good place for them to live for a very long time, and I'm getting much better at making sure I give them friends to keep them company.

It's just that the line-up isn't getting any shorter...

Where I recently moved to, I am making it a strong point to plan before buying. Gotta keep in mind that there is a lot of options. One day I'll think that I decided on the best thing to plant in a certain spot, yet a week later if I haven't planted anything there, I'll have come up with a new best thing.

Right now I'm enjoying the chance to just watch the land and let inspiration find me. Planting in small bursts rather than trying to get everything done at once.

I definitely do both.
I lust after plants that I hear about. 9 out of 10 I finally convince myself won't grow here, and they end up on a spreadsheet with a comment. The rest I hunt down. Sometimes it takes years (I'm currently on my third batch of Camellia sinensis, this time growing from seed). Sometimes I will just succumb to temptation and (while I'm ordering) slip in a few exciting alternatives. I am getting better at resisting temptation - those orphan plants sitting in pots looking accusingly at me for not looking after them have taught me over the years to be stricter with my self - there is always another year (I hope).
So making the right bit of growing area for the plants is a combination of fitting them in, or planning a whole new growing space, which is always fun! Usually it is the plant or plants that drive that though, rather than a desire to fill a particular space. I'm hoping eventually that the area round the house will all look a bit more deliberate, at the moment there are spaces which I let be, since they are access to something else that is going to change. I do love playing fantasy gardens though, and sketching out how the plants may look when the area is finished.

Aronia - an excuse for a new garden plan

I always plan exactly what I want and have to buy because I am extremely frugal and don't want to spend a penny more than necessary.

Traditionally I plan, then do something else. So I've stopped planning in much detail. So now I'm an artiste instead of a flake. :-D

I'm "Make Plan", my partner is "Make Plants".  I'd like to say we meet in the middle, but we really end up being "Make Plants".

When I first read your title, I thought, of course I make plans first. Then reality hit. I have a 30x40 garden space and about 12 seed verities each of melons, squashes, lettuce and tomatoes, plus several peppers, radishes, broccolis, Bok choys, plus all the herbs, some chard, and rarer half-wild vegetables. And that’s just the seeds. So I guess ai get the plants I want and hope I can find somewhere to put them.

Christopher Weeks wrote:Traditionally I plan, then do something else. So I've stopped planning in much detail. So now I'm an artiste instead of a flake. :-D

A few years ago, I acknowledged doing this in every aspect of my life.

I do both.

Sometimes the plants on my plan aren’t available.  Sometimes I see a plant I never heard of before that I want to try.  Usually I think about where I will put it before I buy it.

Sometimes I go to a nursery with a spot in mind, looking for a category of plant, and see if they have any options.

I guess this question doesn’t apply to me.  It’s more ‘both and’ than ‘either or’.

I’ve learned along the way, things like “plant plants with similar or compatible water needs together.”

I end up moving a lot of perennials around the garden.  Once a plant is in my garden is when I see what color the flowers really are, and if they don’t look good next to their neighbor then I move one.  I find out what plants bloom at the same time, and move them based on how I want the garden to look.  Here’s what I mean.  I discovered the plums ripened ( a dark purple red ) at the same time the echinacea bloomed, so I moved echinacea beside the plum trees (there were two that formed an archway over a path).  

I just have to get them home and see what they are before I know what to do with them🌞

I try to be smart about it, but at the end of the day, I get plants and then figure it out later.  All in all, I have several trees and bushes that should produce more than I need and that is the name of the game, isn't it?  If we only ever planned, we'd never end up getting those one of a kind flowering bushes that only produce beauty. Who plans for beauty? Not me anyway - I plan for food. But I do love beauty, so I guess its a good thing that I fly by the seat of my pants without giving it too much thought.

I plan, then buy plants, then grumble as I remake my plan - sometimes most of the time, completely.

A follow up, just to prove my point.

I just got home with 10 bare root paw-paw trees, 10 bare root american plum trees, and 30 strawberry plants i got from the county plant nursery.

The plan?

Nowhere in sight.

I guess I am guerilla gardening a nearby woods that had a wind microblast open up some canopy to the light.

I am a buy plants.....and more plants.....and more plants  kinda girl then I make a plan about were to plant them.  
I also collect and forage seeds from plants for the following planting season.  I have tons of those also.  I have started donating them to my nearby library which has a seed library for member use.  Then I get more seeds .....it is all done in good intentions and eventually I do get a an together.   There is nothing like when a plan finally comes together and you get that big juicy tomato for your biscuit and gravy.

I have gotten better at "impulse buying" at nurseries; how you ask?  Step one: I rarely go to them. Step two: before deciding to buy, I have to have a place in mind as to where I'll put the plant once home and to have a purpose for getting said plant.  Step three: If there is no spot immediately available, I think through how time-consuming it is to lift sod in order to prep a spot.  

That's not to say I still don't end up with plants!  More and more, I'm purchasing plants online, because they simply aren't carried around here.  Last winter, (dangerous plant purchasing time for me) I decided I needed a few heartnuts among other things.  I then walked to the back where I intended to plant them (see step 2 above) and I decided there was room.  I kind of cheated, and I know it's not great for the environment, but I laid down some landscaping cloth that I'd had (which, after a year or two, I'll lift and reuse as needed)  My go-to method is to line beds with hosta because its root is pretty impenetrable, it remains pretty stable in that it doesn't run, it is wonderful to mow next to, and it always looks neat.  With that being said, I just finished digging a foot-wide length around the landscaping cloth, which I decided to turn perpendicular to an existing bed along the property line, rounding the corners for easy mowing. So, to do the length and rounding the corners of the 30' length, that ended up being about 65+ feet which took me about three full days to prep: I shovel-cut sod in sections about the size of cinder blocks, turned each over to dry a little, then shook out all the soil, and hauled the sod to the way back behind the evergreen screen.  I then shovel-cut sections from existing hostas, hacksawed those into smaller clumps and planted.  Whew!  

Not only that, I did the same along the long fence line of the pool, another 60' or so because I'd ordered (again, this past winter!) some dwarf pears to plant there. (I have two pears already, but they both are infected with stony pit disease, and are more or less inedible at this point.  I can't even cut them in half with a knife because they are so twisted and stony. Last year, I planted some Asian pears, but it will be a few years for them, as well)  I will leave the landscaping cloth down for a year or so and will have a lot of ground ready to plant, perhaps with divided strawberries.  That's exciting.  The hosta is in, and I'll interplant those with daffodils, snowdrops, etc.  The hosta foliage will then grow up and cover the daffodil mess of leaves and create a barrier between lawn and garden.

I wanted a hawthorn after reading about its virtues visually, as a wildlife tree and as a heart medicine.  Again, this past winter, I ordered one, and thought that I had the perfect spot, but the more I thought about it, I realized that the canopy of other plants were going to make it impossible, as it will grow to be @30' tall and wide. Between that, the thorns and the possible malodorous smell, I am much happier with its final placement off the beaten path, which will still be very accessible.  It will be very visible from the house and street, yet the thorns and smell will not be a danger to anyone.  I did end up digging out a lone elderberry and planting the hawthorn in its place.  The elderberry has now joined its brethren out back on the property line bed near where the heartnuts were planted.  All of these are good changes and I'm extremely happy with my choices.  I still have some Tillamook goumi, a dwarf cherry and the pears to plant, but they all have spots waiting.  That's one thing about winter purchases; you have time to think about placement and prep work.

More and more, I'm dividing plants that I have here and only purchasing those that I don't yet have or that don't propagate easily.   It was much easier to tuck in flowers, but once I started down the rabbit hole of permaculture and dealing with trees and shrubs, I realized that it would take more planning.  The hard part is that I keep discovering new trees that I want.  I have an acre and I am always thinking, "OK, now I'm done!" but then I'll discover another "must-have" plant...like the Hawthorn.  Geez! I don't think that I can get any more trees, yet I manage to keep finding spots!  Last year, after reading about Cornelian cherries, I got to thinking about how much I hated the forsythia out back (most of the year, it looked like a ginormous, mangled rat's nest that would root wherever it touched down), so I offered it free to anyone willing to dig it out.  I had a taker who came and spent two days digging.  He did finally get it out--Hallelujah! In its place, I was able to put in two Cornelian cherries.  I will now have a well-behaved plant that won't require so much if any pruning, has earlier pretty yellow blooms and beautiful, edible red fruit in the late summer.  Win, win!

I find that I no longer go to nurseries unless there is a specific need: I have an artesian well that has gotten flooded, so after looking up plants that do well in wet situations, I went to the nursery, when at the end of the season, they were having a shrub sale and I was able to buy a button bush, some winterberries and low-growing aronias to plant there.  I am tempted by flowers, so I find that if I just stay away, it's safer.  I'm busy here just maintaining beds and the vegetable garden anyway.  Soon, I'll be canning, drying, fermenting, pickling and making wine! I guess my newer temptations would be the infrastructure and tools that will make the work easier: Freeze-dryer, canner, wine-making supplies, cattle panel, nut-gatherer, etc. etc.

I am sort of both.....or neither.

I spend all of the Winter and early Spring months thinking and planning what I will grow in the new year.  Then the new year comes and I just go and get whatever I can find and plant wherever I think is a good spot.

Eric