It’s All About The Money (Garden)
In today’s trouble economic times, it behooves ($10 word of the day) us all to understand a little bit about investing money and the financial terms that are used when talking about money. You may not know this about me, but I am a financial advice junkie. Â I listen to Marketplace podcasts, I read money blogs and when I am depressed, nothing cheers me up faster than listening to reruns of Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman shows (because listening to people get gently reprimanded and corrected for making colossal money blunders just somehow makes me feel better about my own mistakes).
But this is a garden blog and not a money blog so why I am I talking about this? Because did you know that many financial terms can be explained in gardening terms? It’s true! I know, I was shocked too when I thought of it.
Here is an example of what I mean. Financial institutions and investments. A financial institution is a garden bed and investments are plants.
If you do your research into financial institution is about and its past performance and use it for the right kinds of investments, a financial institution will likely do well for you, but even with the right investments, sometimes things can go wrong and your investment may not do as well as you had hoped.
You can literally replace “financial institution” with “garden bed” and “investments” with “plants” and the statement is still true. See what I mean? SO COOL!
You can talk about the garden using financial terms.
Interest – Hydrangea is an example of this. You plant a hydrangea and, once it is established, you can start cuttings from the mother plant. Which you can then reinvest in your garden and watch as your garden portfolio grows.
Compound Interest – Iris. Plant an iris rhizome and in a few years, as long as there are no problems, you will have many rhizomes. Every new rhizome that grows, grows new rhizomes. It just keeps building on itself.
High Risk Investments – Roses. Yes, some people do fine with them and they do wonderfully for them, but people who grow roses have a tolerance for high maintenance and high plant loss. But, if you find the right bed and the right rose plant and you are willing to bit a little extra work into the (or hire a gardener), you will be rewarded with an amazingly gorgeous flower (most of the time). Plant a rose, ignore it and cross your fingers – well, it might work out for you. Or you could end up with a bramble.
Low Risk Investment – Hosta. This plant can be grown by just about anyone and needs very little care. Â Of course, if you do pay attention, make sure you start it at the right financial institution (i.e. flower bed), then you can get some pretty stunning results but even if you don’t, you still have a decent looking plant. Could you have problems with your hosta investment? Sure, any plant can have problems. But the chances are far less.
Long Term Investments – Perennials. When you plant a perennial, you are looking for it to last for years and years. Good (normally steady) growth with spurts of flowering rewards.
Short Term Investments – Annuals. They are only meant to last a short period. Yes, you can invest in them solely year after year and you get lovely flowers, but it can get a bit costly to rely solely on them.
Assets – Your garden plants. Every plant that you lovingly grew and cared for, whether you grew them from seed or bought them at the nursery or inherited them from a friend or family or just happened to stumble on it – this is your assets – your garden portfolio.
Debt – Weeds. You didn’t put down mulch, you didn’t get out there early in the spring to pull them, you  had poor management practices with your garden beds or you planted the wrong kind of investment (e.g. Bishop’s Weed). Whatever the reason, you have weeds. Everybody has them and sometimes they are not a bad thing (I personally like Queen Anne’s Lace), but nevertheless, they tend to get out of hand quickly if you don’t deal with them and the saying “grow like weeds” is not just a saying. It is a fact. Weeds take compound interest to a whole new level and, left unmanaged, can completely wreck your garden investments.
Gardening and money have many things in common. They require patience and care to grow them, sometimes things can terribly wrong despite your best efforts  but if you just think, learn from the bumps and work a bit, you will be handsomely rewarded in the long run.
So true! I think there is a finance book idea lurking in this blog post!
I like the finance/budget metaphor for work done in the garden! “Weeds = debt” rings especially true. And I Tweeted this post, too (@WilliamsWrite).
Now…off to weed, literally and financially…
I would like to see you do the same article with vegetables, fruits and edibles in the future.
Overhead = paths/statues/”bones” of the garden?
Apparently someone wants to behoover my comment under the carpet! Methinks Monsanto is behind it all…anyway, Bravo on another great post! Love this site and very happy to have found it through The Soulsby Farm site. My son is a financial advisor so I dare say that quantifies me to comment? Our roses are no longer problems for us since we moved out of town, now they are just possum food therefore we shall call them cancelled investments for the purposes of this comment (sigh…) and when it comes to hostas… I think you are giving us a bit of unsound financial advice. I had to move my hostas into the glasshouse and even then they got totally scoffed by slugs. I think hostas are like computers without security…they give out some sort of “innocence aura” and every slug (hacker) comes from miles around and predates them…(heavier sigh than the first one…) I personally think that we would get more sound financial advice out of a garden (and one of those rural Sussex U.K. gardeners who says nothing but “yarp” and “narp”) to be honest. I figure that by watching our garden returns we can get a much better understanding of the “big picture” and we could do worse than following the bean market rather than bulls or bears. I am SO glad that I found your blog and will be sharing it around with my best and most anarchistic gardening companions to be savoured and discussed at length with whatever our equivalent of cigars and fine port is on the day (most likely a cup of tea and a stale biscuit…who has time for fresh biscuits eh? We are too busy hacking our way through the wilderness jungles of weeds (unwise investments) that are currently plaguing our lives!
I used to watch “Clean House” for the same reason (and I’d always vacuum or swiffer the floor or something because of it.)
Although some of the plant specifics are different here on the West Coast, I think your post is spot-on and a great way to reconsider the garden and our relationship to it. A keeper.
We tend to use evergreen hardy plants in our designs and let the client add the perennials, non frost hardy plants with colour to avoid any issues down the raod and keep the garden looking well all year round, we have some videos on our website http://gardensnow.ie/ if you are interested in taking a look!
I definitely agree with this.. Gardening can be a great investment if you want to make money out of it. However, just like what has been stated in the conclusion, it requires patience. You need to undergo highs and lows, ups and downs while growing plants. As for me, I choose roses- they can be quite robust when it comes to temperature conditions.
I invite you to follow my blog, Gardening Upstream.
Absolutely LOVED this. My hubby thinks gardening is a waste (of time, money, space, etc…) But after reading this fabulous compilation, I’m going to print it out and make my husband read it (after he review how poorly his Schwab portfolio is doing this month.) THEN I’m going to put a giant salad of arugula, sweet pea sprouts, lettuce and herbs freshly picked from my garden. And make him eat it. 🙂 Keep up the good work!
How would you map cacti? 😛
Have you ever read Jerzy Kosinski’s “Being There?” The main character, Chance, makes a similar point. Highly recommended.
Love this article!! To fun….
I am so happy to see this post. I love reading Dave Ramsey and others in that field, and I love learning more about managing my money. Of course, I am at your blog because I garden (and I love that too). So, it’s a treat to see a blog post with an original idea that marries two of my favorite subjects. Like a previous poster said, I think you have a future book here!
Another “investment’ in the garden is a collection of heirloom seeds. The return on investment is all the great veggies you harvest! If you don’t want to pay high shipping cost, buy them from the Virtual Farm Seed Co. They offer $2 shipping for any size order. The websit is http://www.virtualfarmseedco.com
I love this post! Great way to categorize– and prioritize– your plantings. Better to invest in compound interest plants than high risk ones. Great entry, especially since many of us are on tight budgets and/or have small gardens. Irises suddenly seem a whole lot nicer to me now! Thanks for this!
Just found your blog and read the “Before posting” rules. Let me say, my granddaughter’s name is Hannah. Anyone named Hannah is beyond reproach so you need not fear that I would EVER insult you. Now, I am not an actual gardener but have always been one in my mind. This particular post has given me the push I need and am going to start NOW. It is just the time here in Texas to start preparations (so I’ve been told) and I am planning new landscaping and maybe 2 (ea) square foot planting beds. I mean it this time, I really do. Pray for me. I’ll need it.
WHat a clever concept. As someone who failed math all the time, but who gardened all the time, I can now really relate to this many of these. So clever and funny, keep it up!
Wonderful way to put it I think, Its a good Idea especially to grow stuff that you would actually eat. Like me I would invest in lots of carrots and onions. I really agree with the long term investment of say a fruit tree.
I was actually just thinking about this today whilst starting a new project. Starting out is an investment, with most things I think, unless you start off with seeds and are just patient.
LOVE IT! I use the same kind of analogy to my customers: Basil plants are like your 401K – If you can keep you hands off of it until it grows, you will have more to cut later!
I agree that long term investment is the way to go. Plant something that will you can all the benefits for years to come. Fruit tree and greens will e a good bet.
When comes to debt, it is all about doing it consistently. I can’t remember how many times i weed out the grass but it took a lot of efforts to see the benefits i can get.
How true. You get what you sow.
Funny! Time to rethink my vegetable and herb heavy portfolio!
Love this post! What a great way to explain how to look at gardening!