Lopping My Yard Into Perfection

August 27, 2026 — Pat Bertram

It rained last night, a lovely surprise. Even better, it rained enough that it gave me an extra day off from watering. It also rained enough that the ground is too wet for me to be clomping around on that sodden clay soil to dig up weeds. (I’ve been pretty much keeping up with weeds that I can reach from my grassy areas, but the deep garden areas are more difficult to access, especially when the ground is muddy and slippery.)

So, no gardening work today! It’s just as well — I’ve been in a lopping mood lately, and it’s probably not fair to take it out on my garden even more than I have. (Luckily, the bush I lopped off almost to the ground a couple of weeks ago is starting to green up. Whew!)

My raised garden started out in late spring as a freshly planted petunia patch, to match the petunia container gardens dispersed throughout my yard. Then the self-seeded moss rose started growing, which made a nice counterpoint to the petunias. Then the self-seeded marigolds got going. I wasn’t sure what to do about any of it. It ruined my matching-petunia-gardens theme, but I thought those other plants deserved a chance, so I just let it all go, though as more marigolds took hold, I thinned them and moved the seedlings to other places in my yard. Unfortunately, those pretty frilly marigold seedlings that were left in the raised garden ended up being shrubbery. No exaggeration. Some of those plants were almost two-feet tall and almost that big around. That most were only twelve to eighteen inches didn’t make them any less of a shrub. (To give you an idea of the size of the plants, all the marigolds in the accompanying photo are from a section of a single plant.)

Anyway, those “shrubs” kept growing and growing until just about all I could see of my raised garden were marigolds. They’re not my favorite flower, though judiciously spread through my gardens to fill in blank spots, they help brighten my fall yard. But a whole sea of marigolds? Too much of a sort-of-good thing.

Irritated by the marigold takeover, but not totally willing to yank out all the plants (I’m going to have company in three weeks, and they are looking forward to seeing my “park,” so I want it to look as good as possible), I did the next best thing. At least I hope it is. At any rate, it was the only solution I could think of — I chopped the heads off those plants. Now all the plants in the raised garden are the same height. With any luck, the puny petunias and stringy moss rose will be able to make a comeback now that they aren’t being buried beneath the huge crowns of the marigold shrubs.

If they marigolds die, I’ll pull them up, which is what I would have done if I weren’t so determined that my yard look its best. It will be interesting to see what happens. Perhaps they might even grow a few new flowers.

Meantime, the whole yard is heaving a sigh of relief. Not only are they drinking up the moisture and basking in the relative of cool of this after-rain day, they are thrilled that I’m not out there with my pruning shears, trying to lop my yard into perfection.