Do you follow daily routines in your home? Maybe you have a morning routine such as Hal Elrod’s Miracle Morning. Or maybe you follow an evening routine such as Crystal Paine’s Make Over Your Evening. Following a regular routine will set you up for a successful day. (Some links are affiliate links. If you click a link and purchase I can make a commission at no extra cost to you. See my Privacy Policy for more details.)

Routines help us to gain control over certain areas of our lives. They give us focus and help us to be more motivated. We often have work routines, holiday routines, and those am/pm routines. We create specific routines during the school year and different routines in the summer.

But have you ever thought of creating a garden routine? If having a daily routine can help you to stay focused and on task at home or work, a garden routine can do the same for your garden. It could help you to become more productive so that your garden can flourish. Being consistent with a garden routine can help you grow an amazing garden!

Here are some of the potential benefits of creating a daily and weekly garden routine.

Benefits of a Garden Routine

1. Important tasks that need to be completed won’t be forgotten.
2. Automating your activities helps you to accomplish more.
3. Your work will be done faster so you have more time for relaxing.
4. Small tasks don’t become overwhelming chores because we put them off.
5. You’ll feel more organized and productive in the garden.
6. You won’t be spending your whole weekend working in the garden.
7. Your produce won’t spoil on the vine.
8. Cutting garden flowers will be used regularly.

Steps to Plan Your Garden Routine

In order to create valuable routines for your garden, you will first need to ask yourself what is most important. Are you just wanting to maintain your grass, shrubs, and perennials? Do you need to create a vegetable garden, herb bed, or cutting garden? Do you have container gardens to maintain?

Once you have a good idea of the basic areas you need to work on in your garden, you can begin to create your routines. As you are creating these routines keep the seasons in mind. Activities done in July will be different than those in January. So start with your current season. Then consider the other season’s activities.

Related: 5 Habits of a Highly Productive Gardener

Now, follow these six steps to create your perfect garden routine by season.

Step 1: Make a List of Chores

Start by making a list of all the chores that need to be done regularly in your garden. You’re going to brainstorm tasks that you need to accomplish. This list will vary by season but you’ll have some basic chores that might need to be done throughout the year.

Start your list with these basic activities that need to be completed regularly. You might need to clean your porch and maintain the flower pots by your front door each week. Lawn mowing and watering pots might be on your list of typical chores. Jot down any activity that you do most seasons of the year.

Then add seasonal chores to your list. For example, you might need to prepare your garden beds, plant your seeds/seedlings, weed your flower beds, dead-head your daisies, water, and fertilize your plants. For now, just list everything you can think of. Don’t worry when you will be working on the task.

Step 2: Separate Chores by Season

Now we want to organize our tasks for each season. Some tasks might need to be done every season such as sweeping your front porch. But many tasks might be listed for only a couple of seasons.

Note: If your lists seem overwhelming at this point, just work on the current season. Don’t worry about what you’ll be doing 3-6 months from now. Instead, just focus on your routine right now. You can go back later and work on the other seasons once you have your current routine in place.

Step 3: Estimate the Time for Each Chore

Once you have a list of the activities you’ll need to complete during this season, determine how much time each chore might take weekly to accomplish. For those chores that are seasonal, consider how much time will be needed to complete them overall.

Here are a few examples of what this might look like.

• In the spring you’ll need to plant your flower seeds over the course of a few weeks. It will take a couple of hours overall to get your seeds planted.
• You might need to weed your garden heavily in the spring and then continue to weed throughout the garden season. Overall, it might take a few hours each week during the active growing season to keep up with the weeds.
• You’ll spend 60 minutes each week mowing the grass during spring and summer.

Start with a general amount of time but then adjust it as you determine the actual amount of time you spend. Try to be realistic about this time. If you have 30 flower pots that need to be hand-watered daily, it’s going to take more than the 10 minutes you’ve estimated.

Step 4: Determine How Much Time You Can Devote to Your Garden

Once you have a general idea of the amount of time needed to grow and maintain your garden you can start to develop your routines. Looking at the total chore time needed, break it down to how much time you might need each week to accomplish those tasks.

Now carefully consider how much time you have to devote to your garden each week. If you decide you need 10 hours per week in your garden but you only have 5 hours available, then you might need to rethink your garden plans.

Be honest with yourself about how much actual time you have. So many people are weekend gardeners. They spend all day Saturday trying to get everything done. But they can’t seem to do everything and they feel overwhelmed. It becomes a burden rather than a pleasure to work in the garden.

If instead, you spend a little time each day in your garden, the tasks won’t be so overwhelming. You’ll be able to stay on top of the job and everything won’t be so stressful. You’ll begin to look forward to your gardening time…to the quiet and beauty of your cutting garden, to the buzzing of the bees in your herb bed, to the harvesting of beans and tomatoes in your vegetable patch.

How much time could you devote daily to your gardening chores? This is the key to creating routines that you can follow and accomplish your chores without the overwhelm.

This is the beauty of a routine. Once you build it and begin to follow through, the routine will become a habit. And you will automatically complete the tasks without stress or worry.

Step 5: Create a Tentative Schedule

Once you have your list of chores and how much time it will take, you can then plot this into your daily routine. Choose a set time and then specify the activities you want to accomplish during that time.

Determine when you will work in your garden. Look for small blocks of time that you can incorporate into your day. It’s best to create times that you can consistently maintain but it’s also okay to plan in a few larger time blocks. For example, you might have 30 minutes each morning and 1 hour in the evening to spend in your garden but on Saturday you have 2 extra hours in the afternoon.

Now plot your activities into the allotted time for gardening. If you have 15 minutes in the morning you can quickly harvest flowers for a bouquet. If you have an hour after dinner you can dead-head those flowers and pull weeds around the base of the plants. Try to plan these activities with a pattern in mind.

With an hour in the morning, you could harvest your produce. In the evenings you might need to hand-water your container plants and fertilize the flowers. What your garden routine looks like will depend on the type of gardening you’re doing but the same principles will apply.

Some people don’t like to follow strict schedules. They would prefer to do what they feel like doing at the time. But let’s face it…no one will ever feel like weeding the vegetable beds.

When you follow your pre-planned routine in the garden, you’re much more likely to complete your gardening tasks. The chores will be less overwhelming. You’ll have more opportunities to harvest your produce and flowers. But best of all, you’ll begin to see the beauty in the rhythm of your garden.

Step 6: Adjust Your Routines for the Season

Plan to adjust your garden routines each season. The chores in April will be different from those in August. Spring will need more prepping and planting. Summer will be spent weeding and harvesting. Autumn routines include harvesting and cleaning up and finally, winter routines focus more on planning.

Creating and following through with a garden routine will help you to become a ninja gardener. Just like you have routines at home or work, creating garden routines can be an effective way to maintain your garden. Whether you have a miracle morning or you’ve made over your evening, your garden routine will keep your garden beautiful.

By creating these garden routines you’ll have so much more success and joy in your garden. And a more efficient garden process means more time spent enjoying your lovely garden.