Strategic Planning for Your Garden
Every year I make a plan for my garden. I enjoy making my garden plan, choosing which plants I’m going to grow for the year, making sure I have enough space to reach my production goals, figuring out how many seeds I need, and when to start them. But, what about long-term, more strategic planning? Businesses have used strategic planning for decades. Figuring out where you want to go in your garden and how to get there is key to your garden success. So sharpen those pencils and start doing some strategic planning for your garden!
Why Do A Strategic Plan?
When you develop a strategic plan for your garden it forces you to do the difficult thinking and planning you need to develop your garden vision. The plan should allow you to clearly communicate your vision for the garden. What is your purpose behind growing the garden? How do you want it to look? What will your finished garden have in it? Sitting down and getting clarity on what you really want out of your garden helps you to define success. You aren’t looking for the “right” answers, but if you never define what your ideal garden is, you can never get there.
Strategic planning also forces you to lay out the steps for how you will get to your goal. Once you have the end goal, your brain automatically starts figuring out the steps to close the gap between where you are now and where you want to go. Creating the strategic plan helps you decide what to do next in your garden. It’s like the compass that keeps you on track towards your goal. Every step may not be perfect, but as long as you are headed in the right direction, you will get there eventually.
Purpose Planning
Understanding your purpose for gardening is key. It’s not that you need a specific “right” purpose, but choosing a purpose determines how you plan your garden. If you want to grow a few fruits and veggies as a fun hobby, your garden will look one way. But if you plan to grow food for a family of six, it will look completely different. An experimental garden to teach your kids science and outdoor fun could be yet another different vision. It doesn’t matter what the vision is as long as it’s yours.
Also you don’t have to choose a permanent purpose. It can change over time. But it is important to choose ONE purpose and focus your planning on it for right now. There can be secondary purposes, but constantly switching from one to another will waste your time and resources. Choose a purpose that you expect to have for the next three to five years to start with. Then you can build your strategic plan around that vision for your garden.
Resource Planning
The next step in strategic planning for your garden is to be realistic about what resources you have available. What space do you have available for your garden? How much time can you spend in your garden each day, week, or month? Are you limited to a specific dollar amount for your budget? Do you already have some knowledge, skills, tools, or supplies? Or are you starting from zero. Who do you know that has gardening experience that you can draw upon?
You don’t have to have a perfectly complete list to start your garden. There may be gaps in resources that you will need to develop. The important piece is to discover where the gaps are so you can plan how you will fill them. Be creative and brainstorm ideas for how to access the resources you need. Can you research free gardening supplies in your area? Does your local library or community center have a seed swap or tool swap you can benefit from? Can you barter your skills in a non-gardening topic for a neighbor or friend’s skills that you need? The possibilities are almost endless once you start looking for them.
Scope Planning
Once you have your strategic garden vision and purpose, and you know your resource limitations, you need to think seriously about the scope of your garden. Starting off with too big of a garden plan or allowing the scope of your garden plan to rapidly expand can create lots of problems. If you don’t have the space, time, or resources to properly maintain your garden, you will lose a lot of plants to weeds, pests, and disease. It is frustrating to watch your hard work get destroyed and not get any produce to show for it at the end of the growing season.
Be brutally realistic about your resources and keep your scope as small as possible to start out. A small, well-maintained, successful garden will keep you moving towards your vision. Even if your vision is to grow all the food for your family, give yourself the time to ramp up over several growing seasons. Expand your scope in one dimension at a time if possible. For example, expand the size of your garden but keep generally what you are growing the same. Or expand into a new crop, but use the same footprint. Add a new technique or growing method in the same size garden and with your usual crops. This will help you focus your plan and not get overwhelmed.
Expecting Challenges
The last piece of strategic planning for your garden is doing what is called a “threats analysis”. Basically you spend some time thinking of all the things that could go wrong and developing some contingency plans. There are lots of possible things that could go wrong in your garden. You may not be able to prepare for or prevent them all. But having a few plans in place can help you minimize the damage and salvage some of your harvest if you’re able to act quickly.
Some examples include: planting extra seeds in case you have poor germination, unexpected weather, or a pest attacks your plants; succession planting so your harvest extends over a longer timeframe and you can recover from a one-time event with plants in different life stages; use multiple layers of protection for your plants with possible pest threats including physical barriers, natural repellants, and traps. No plan is ever perfect and you have to expect challenges that you didn’t consider. Being flexible and updating your plan as needed allows you to stay on course towards your goals, even when challenges get in your way. Start building your strategic plan today.
Looking for more ideas to keep pests away from your plants? Check out my blog post on How to Protect Your Garden From Pests & Critters for all my best contingency plans. Enjoy!
Want to walk through your garden plan step-by-step to make sure you have everything you need to succeed? Invest in my Garden Planning Masterclass and complete your actionable garden plan today!
