For those concrete thinkers among you I must declare up front: I’m not just talking about plants and gardening here. In every place that I mention something horticultural you could substitute something else that you’ve killed and get the message. Think about that job you didn’t get or were fired from. Consider the business you started that quickly folded, the idea you had that never flourished, or the art or craft project that flopped. You get the idea, right? We’re talking failure here, in or out of the garden.
This is on my mind because I heard a horticultural marketing specialist state that one reason people don’t buy plants is because they’re worried about killing them.
What? Since when does any part of life come with guarantees? And is it really in your best interest to have everything you do succeed?
Here’s why you should welcome the opportunity to kill plants: If everything that you place in the ground thrived and did well, you’d never have an opportunity to try something new. Often our best openings come about because something has failed and we’re forced to look elsewhere.
Human beings don’t really like change. We often put up with less than satisfactory circumstances because we’re used to the status quo and alterations take effort. We get so comfortable in our ruts that it’s difficult to see that we’re actually in the pits. When something doesn’t succeed we are compelled to climb out of those depths that we’ve been lulled into thinking are really OK.
Plant death is an opportunity to grow something new.
Sometimes we can figure out why a plant has died, but in other instances we never know. Ask around, do some research, but by all means KEEP PLANTING.
