Inspiration

Your astrological guide to gardening

Article by Your Home and Garden

What does your astrological sign say about the way you should tend your garden? Plenty!

Aries
MARCH 21 TO APRIL 19

You natural-born leaders, fearless trendsetters and slightly self-absorbed souls love unusual, bold and striking plants. Your garden has the hottest plant before it becomes hot; the coolest designs before they become cool. None dare call you a fool but you dig where angels fear to weed, and with your determination and who-cares-what-anyone-else-thinks attitude your potentially whacky schemes work – eventually.

Taurus
APRIL 20 TO MAY 20

Your garden is wild, sensuous and restful. Not one for instant gratification, your prudence and patience has you buying small trees and delighting in watching them grow through the seasons and years. You refuse to give up on troublesome plants, with perhaps too much stubbornness and pride you cosset them and buy plant replacements to repeat the often-unproductive process again.

Gemini
MAY 21 TO JUNE 20

More pedestrian souls may find your garden overwhelming, bursting with a discombobulating array of plants in pots and half-finished projects; others are excited by this product of your ever-playful, quick and curious intellect, darting from one passion to another, like a red admiral in ongaonga (tree nettle). The truth, though you will deny it with every pore in your silver Gemini tongue, is that they are in pots because planting into the ground smacks of commitment, and who knows, when you may change your mind.

Cancer
JUNE 21 TO JULY 21

Sheltered, productive and pretty, your garden is a sanctuary for you and your loved ones. While you bask in the well-deserved admiration that this, your baby, receives from those outside your close circle, any hint of criticism can send you into a sulk or a misery of self-doubt. This is because you think it mightn’t live up to the (incredibly high) standards you set. Get over it, deep down you know that yours is a garden with a creativity borne of love, and an ambience seldom achieved by gardeners of other star signs.

Leo
JULY 22 TO AUGUST 22

My, what magnificent gardens you Leos have. Flamboyant, dramatic, theatrical even, they really are showstoppers and fitting places for you to hold court or entertain. We love your brave plant choices and the confidence with which you place the most unlikely plants together and somehow make it work (aesthetically anyway, for we know you’ve hidden your failures as that pile of dead plants out the back reveal). You’re a delegator; after all, that’s what underlings are for – weeding, clipping, carting, the donkey work.

Virgo
AUGUST 23 TO SEPTEMBER 22

Few can truly fault your garden as individualistic as it is. Beautifully cultivated and orderly, it is also logical, according to your own ideals. That it is often in a state of flux owes most to your being a perfectionist, and a hard worker who finds it difficult to sit idle for long. You’re the one unconsciously weeding while you entertain in the garden. If something isn’t in the right place, you have no hesitation about doing something about. Luckily, you also hate waste, so rather than biff you’ll be rearranging plants, rocks and paths until they are just perfect.

Libra
SEPTEMBER 23 TO OCTOBER 22

With your exquisite taste, your garden is absolutely charming, rich in beautiful plants. Most of your garden, that is, for we cannot but notice the number of these still in their pots in as you decide on the best place to plant them. Once you have weighed up all the pros and cons of every potential site, we know you’ll mainly get it right. Your philosophical approach to your failures is admirable. As you say, like your successes, they are just part and parcel of the true essence of gardening – and life.

Scorpio
OCTOBER 23 TO NOVEMBER 21

It is hard to pinpoint just what it is that makes your garden so fabulous. Maybe it lies in the courage and singularity of your plant choices and the unexpected in your design – be that cactus erupting out of a bed of sweet honeysuckle, how you all-but obliterated the previous owners’ efforts to implement your own vision, or gave over the sunniest most productive spot to the hens because you know they love it. Whatever, like you, it always contains that desirable yet often elusive mystery and surprise.

Sagittarius
NOVEMBER 22 TO DECEMBER 20

It is always an adventure visiting your ever-changing garden. The seeds you scatter all grow, the trees are heavy with fruit and the weeds despatched with as much ease as the bon mots that fall from your mouth. Fortunately, your many friends are happy to receive your bounty. Some put your successes down to green thumbs, which in your case means that your enquiring mind has researched each plant’s preferences.

Capricorn
DECEMBER 21 TO JANUARY 19

No mistaking your garden. It’s pleasant but more obviously, it is well-tended, and highly productive, with vegetable beds and fruit trees, and flowers of course – for the vase, waste of money buying them. There is always something to put in the pot from the industrious Capricorn’s garden, and to give away, along with the tiniest quiet word in the recipient’s ear about how easy it would be to grow their own, just a little elbow grease is all that’s needed.

Aquarius
JANUARY 20 TO FEBRUARY 18

Are they plastic flowers in your hedge? Highly likely, for you free-spirited, eccentric creatures bow to no conventions, not least when it comes your gardens, which are always uplifting. Yours may also win a prize in the most conventional garden society competitions because of your avid love of detail. Not usually a ‘joiner’, you are likely to be the backbone, if not the slightly daffy leading light, in the local community gardens, as befitting your egalitarian and humanitarian soul.

Pisces
FEBRUARY 19 TO MARCH 20

Your garden is in effect your rose-tinted glasses. It is a beautiful escape, a true retreat, from the pressures and sometimes plain ugliness of life. Your ability to avoid reality and this constant search for the most glittering prizes can mean you spare little cost, mental, physical or financial, on the garden. Why buy a little tree and wait when you can have a big one, even if it be on tick? Often influenced too much by fashions and personalities, don’t go with the flow, swim upstream and your garden will become truly great.