For Martha Stewart, gardening is a discipline that starts with good planning. Across the acres of her Bedford estate, the landscape reflects the same attention to scale, structure, and detail as a beautifully designed interior.
As Miracle-Gro's Chief Gardening Officer, she approaches fall garden preparation with an understanding that an exterior space, much like a home, needs a strong foundation to work well over time. That approach has come from years of learning and experimenting, which she shared when she sat down with us at .
'I grew a lot at the same time, and I'm very proud of the vast number of different kinds of plants and shrubs and trees that I grew on my farm,' Martha explains when reflecting on her personal fall rituals. 'We have hundreds of different species of trees and plants.'
Looking after such a wide variety of plants takes plenty of knowledge. 'And just knowing their names is a feat. Knowing how to take care of all those plants is also a feat,' she adds. 'Not for the faint-hearted, by the way. And so it's astonishing how much you can learn by gardening and how much knowledge can be gained from planting an interesting garden.'
That knowledge is especially useful when planning a home garden, where a plant's eventual size can greatly affect the space around it. When asked about the most significant mistake people make in their yards, Martha points to garden design and, in particular, getting plant placement right. 'Well, you know, it all starts with your garden design and making sure that you're planting the right plants in the right places,' she notes. 'You're not planting something that's going to grow to 60 feet tall right in front of your living room window.'
It's an easy mistake to make when you're standing in a nursery looking at a young plant with plenty of room to grow. 'People make that horrible mistake,' Martha observes. 'They put in a small, pretty little green shrub, and all of a sudden, it's 12 feet tall, so bushy that you don't have any view at your window any longer.'
For Martha, the key is to think beyond the plant as it appears in the garden and consider how it will grow over time. 'People make those mistakes all the time. They don't have labels, they don't have little signs, you know. Every different label tells you how tall or how high it'll grow, so read those labels.'
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The same sense of planning applies to color. A garden can quickly become disjointed when plants are chosen one at a time without considering how they will look together. 'And also, color scheme,' Martha advises. 'Create a garden color scheme that you find pleasing for yourself. And don't do random things, because you can find yourself making a really ugly garden if you just randomly plant everything that's in sight.'
It's also a lesson that applies well beyond gardening. A successful yard, like a successful interior, comes down to understanding the space before filling it. 'So those are things that any basic garden design will help you not make those horrible mistakes,' Martha concludes.
Before breaking ground, it pays to consider the garden as a whole, taking in its proportions, architectural framework, and the way each planting will contribute to the finished composition.