What Is Sow and See?

I'm not a lifelong gardener. I picked up gardening out of necessity when I bought a new home back in 2021. There was a large portion of yard sectioned off for what I suppose was once a garden, but it had been long neglected.

Initially, I did the "Wait a year and see what grows" thing. Unfortunately, what grew was a bunch of vines (and, as I learned later, several highly invasive plants).

In fact, my initial homeowners insurance company actually canceled my insurance after their inspection thanks to a massive Wisteria vine that was trying to take over the house. We panickedly (and arduously) chopped and pulled the whole thing down before the next insurance company could come do their inspection.

After that, I developed a pretty deep grudge against vines. So when the landscaped area in front of my house filled itself out over the summer with a variety of vines — some poisonous, some thorny, all hateful — I knew something had to be done.

The next year, I started my gardening journey. I drove up to the Home Depot, grabbed some plants that looked pretty, and started my work to eliminate all vines and replace them with plants that weren't going to put my mortgage at risk.

I ended up with a couple of Azaleas and a few Columbines at first. I also hammered a border around the edge and filled it with rocks to try and stop the landscaped area from dumping mulch and dirt onto my sidewalk.

And then I quickly killed all of the plants by not watering them enough.

But even though I killed most of what I planted that year — and even though the rock border didn't look as nice as it does in that picture for very long — I found myself really enjoying gardening. It was quiet and meditative. I enjoyed getting away from my desk and getting my hands (and knees, and elbows) into the dirt.

Over time, it just became my hobby. I joined the gardening subreddit. I read countless articles online. I learned that some plants thrive in shade and some need full sun. I discovered soaker hoses and sprinklers.

And after a few years, I found myself killing fewer things than I planted and asking for Home Depot gift cards for every birthday so I could buy more plants.

But this year, two things happened that changed everything.

First, I got fed up with trying to hack together ways to keep my garden off of my sidewalk, so I paid a landscaper to build a retaining wall around it.

Unfortunately, I had to quickly move several plants to keep them from getting crushed during the build (and quite a few were crushed anyway). It really messed up the design I'd been working on for the garden.

Second, Reddit started recommending posts from the native plant gardening subreddit to me. There, I learned that a lot of the plants I'd purchased (and several I inherited from the previous owner) were highly invasive, bad for the ecosystem, and bad for native wildlife.

So between those two things, I recently decided to start over with my garden. This time, I'm only going to grow native plants, and I'm going to try to get that flowing English cottage garden look of the landscapes I admire most on Reddit.

My plan is to document my journey on this site. 

I named the site Sow and See as a play on "try and see" to represent the fact that, once again, I'm taking on a gardening project with no idea what I'm doing. 

I'll probably kill some things unintentionally (I'm going to intentionally kill many things that aren't native). I'll definitely learn some things. And I'll share everything, including my wins and failures — and lots of pictures — along the way.

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