Establishment Is the Work

You've noticed the direction the land is going in. You've added some plants you hope are aligned with that direction. Now comes the part no one photographs.

My new plantings don't look like much. The plants are small. Some of them are dormant. They appear too far apart because there's bare soil between them. Some are flowering but most aren't.

As the first year goes on, weeds sprout from the seed bank that was disturbed by my digging. Some plants which weren't watered enough die. Others look like they might. This is establishment. And it's the part we want to skip.

It's easy to see why. There are the neighbours who walk by and mutter about the "weedy" planting. Or the cottage guests who say nothing but whose silence speaks. Worse is the voice in our own head: Is this really working? Have I been a fool?

In these early months, the temptation is to judge a planting by what it looks like. But real judgment is in what that planting is doing.

So what is it doing? Almost all the action is underground. Roots are exploring, testing the soil, navigating around rocks. Most plants are putting their energy where we can't see it – the visible part is almost an afterthought.

The roots are opening up compacted ground, creating channels for water. Fungi are arriving, starting the process that will connect plant to plant, building networks that share information and food. Bacteria are multiplying. The land is becoming alive in ways that go far beyond the plants you can see.

None of this shows. But without this, the planting wouldn't be there for the long term.

There's a sorting going on as the ecosystem edits itself. The plants in the right place are set up to thrive, finding themselves in a location they can build a life. Others – perhaps planted through mistake or optimism, or favoured by deer or rabbits – struggle and die. This is where reality beats hope, and every plant is a source of information, even the ones that seem like failure.

Gardeners have a neat phrase for establishment: sleep, creep, leap. In year one, almost nothing is visible. In year two, you see more action above ground. By year three, your landscape is starting to fill in. And by year five, you can't remember what your planting looked like at the beginning. The leap phase is so fast that the early years feel like stasis.

Many of us give up in these first seasons. We rip things out and start again because all we see is nothing happening – and nothing happening looks like failure.

Or we throw money at it: amending the soil, adding extra irrigation, buying expensive, larger plants that look like they are skipping the difficult phase. We're reasserting control on a landscape that won't be rushed.

These early years are the work. It's not just a phase to avert our eyes from and ignore, the price you pay for the garden you actually want. Instead it's the work itself. It's gardens gardening.

In the early years, we simply show up, without expectations. We're not hoping to see a flourishing garden, we're just accepting what is. We walk the property, noticing small changes but resisting fixing things that might not be broken.

We don't add extra mulch to cover more ground. We don't add fertilizer to help the plants along. We don't water more than the plants need.

We tread the line of anxiety where we don't know what's working and what's not. Instead, we trust a process that's been going on for millions of years.

Then, around year three or four, we start to feel comfortable. We stop asking if it's going to work and instead ask, what is this becoming? We see plants have found their way. They've developed their roots and are filling in their foliage. The gaps are mostly closed. Birds are present and insects are everywhere. We have a system that's beginning to run itself.

It's not finished, remember? But it's a landscape that is improving itself over time.

All this is difficult, because waiting is harder than doing. We have to protect the planting from our desire to be done.

We just need to stay with it. But how we stay with it matters.