The best gardens aren't pictures of perfection; they're pleasantly imperfect places where nature, design, resourcefulness and the unexpected all come felicitously together. When you stop trying to control everything in your garden, good things happen.

To cultivate an imperfect garden, put away your leaf blower and take a break from using herbicides and pesticides. Right away, you're saving time, energy and resources and turning your backyard into a healthier environment. When you stop using herbicides, you may soon notice pretty violets spreading like a soft blue carpet in shade -- where grass never really flourished, anyway. Clover may appear in the lawn, another sign of environmental diversity. Don't fight it: Clover acts as a natural fertilizer, tolerates drought, and attracts butterflies, bees and other pollinators.

In an imperfect garden, plants have a way of finding their own places. Larkspur, poppies, cosmos, columbine, coneflowers and other flowers that are allowed to go to seed in the garden in autumn naturally spread in the wind, or with the help of birds, to nooks and crannies where they flourish. Few flowers look as charming as those that find their way home in this way, but you can always help them along by moving a few seedlings to other spots that look promising.

Cultivating imperfection simply recognizes that a garden is a process, not a product. It doesn't imply that a garden isn't thoughtfully designed or well maintained. A small tree that seemed just right when you planted it doesn't have to stay there forever if it grows too fast -- or too slowly -- or if it gets in the way of plans for a new porch or potting shed. When you decide to put in a pond, or take one out, it doesn't mean you made the wrong decision the first time, but that your interests are developing.

Gardeners who move plants around frequently, digging up and dividing a clump of day lilies, for example, and distributing them around the garden, understand the beauty and inevitability of incremental improvement and the satisfaction that comes from trying something new, even though it might not work out in the long run. When plants die -- it happens to everyone, everywhere -- it's not a sign of defeat, but an opportunity to experiment further, just as nature does ceaselessly.

Many of nature's signals are not subtle. A tree limb that falls on the birdbath is a reminder to have an arborist check the strength and structure of the magnificent specimen you may have taken for granted for too long. Mature trees show their age in many wonderful ways, developing ever greater character and distinction, and sensitive professional pruning can help you continue to enjoy a venerable tree that may have taken root long before you were born. Natural cavities aren't necessarily bad -- they attract woodpeckers, owls and other birds. To have the pleasure of listening to them and seeing them come and go, you have to accept imperfections in your trees.

When you're pruning trees and shrubs yourself, take it slowly. Make a few cuts, then remind yourself to step back to study the result. Instead of dealing summarily with wayward limbs, try to bring out the plant's natural shape and structure. A branch that seems to lean too close to a garden path may not be at all out of place if it allows you to enjoy the flowers of a blooming shrub up close and to appreciate its fragrance.

Insect hotels, which give shelter to pollinators and other beneficial bugs, draw your eye to the often incidental but beautiful details and detritus of a garden -- pinecones, seed pods, acorn caps, bits of moss, tubular stems. These small structures are, in their nature, imperfect, accidental and fun. A simple wooden frame a couple of inches deep, open except for a facing of half-inch wire mesh on one or both sides and divided into little rooms any way you fancy, filled with comfortable and reassuring natural furnishings, will be an attractive oasis for insects wandering through life in your garden.

Finding a use for leftover materials is another charming hallmark of an imperfect garden. Shards of broken flowerpots can be used to make a crevice garden for rock-garden plants. Chunks of cement from a broken-up patio can be reused as the foundation of a rock garden. Broken bricks make first-rate paving material when they're set in sand. Irregular assemblages of stones or shells or water-worn glass make interesting mosaic designs when there is no need for a more perfect pattern.

Let the ramblers ramble; let your imperfect garden go to seed. Don't fret about last fall's leaf litter under the shrubs: It's good for the soil and for foraging birds. Don't worry about a few dandelions in the lawn: They sparkle on a late-winter day and are an important source of nectar for bees. If you see these as signs of neglect and ask yourself where you went wrong, the answer may be easy: You didn't. Collaborating with nature makes a more perfect garden than any leaf blower ever could.

Flower power today means colorful, low-maintenance blooming plants of all kinds that support a healthy environment and make our world ever more beautiful. Hybridizers are putting flowers powerfully to work.

"The whole world of breeding is more sophisticated" than it used to be, says Diane Blazek, executive director of All-America Selections and the National Garden Bureau, sister organizations that test new plants and promote top performers. Gardeners are looking for beautiful flowers they can rely on, but they also want to attract pollinators and conserve resources -- including time and energy. Modern hybridizers are hip, Blazek says.

New plants in garden shops and in the glossy pages of the latest plant and seed catalogs are hardy and adaptable. Annual flowers are heat- and drought-tolerant, and they produce lots of long-lasting flowers. Begonias introduced in the past few years have transformed consumers' experience with the genus, Blazek says. Large, colorful Viking begonias make big statements all by themselves in pots, and they hold their own with ease in flower beds. Lantanas aren't what they used to be, either. New sterile varieties produce lots of nectar for butterflies and other pollinators, but do not go to seed. Because the plants don't expend energy producing seeds, they bloom almost continuously through summer's heat, without pampering.

This year, the National Garden Bureau's "Year of" program, which promotes stellar garden performers, selected hydrangeas as their first featured shrub. "They're everywhere now, and they are better than ever," Blazek says. "They are longer-blooming (and) easy to care for, they have bigger flower heads, and they're great for sun or shade."

Interest in hydrangeas has skyrocketed in the past few years as hybridizers have introduced new mop-top varieties that bloom reliably even after the coldest winters. New introductions among the panicle hydrangeas, prized for their late-summer and fall flowers, bloom earlier than old-time varieties, and their cone-shaped flower clusters keep their form and freshness for weeks. Hybridizers have also increased the selection of native oak-leaf and smooth hydrangeas, and they've introduced compact varieties just right for small gardens or containers.

Among perennial flowers, such as coneflowers, black-eyed Susans and day lilies, hybridizers have put efforts into increased hardiness, reliability and flower production. These days, gardeners are looking for plants that are hardy even in places where winter temperatures may drop to -30 degrees Fahrenheit.

Russian sage Denim 'n Lace is a good example -- it's a sun-loving, drought-tolerant perennial hardy in bone-chilling Zone 4 winters, but equally at home in the mild winters of the south. The Perennial Plant Association's list of perennials of the year is a roll-call of such tough, colorful garden performers. Past winners include Millennium, a showy and floriferous summer-blooming allium; flashy, bright orange butterfly milkweed, which attracts butterflies and other pollinators; and the graceful fall-blooming anemone Honorine Jobert, which has snow-white flowers.

Interest in kitchen gardening is driving demand for hard-working flowers, too. Pollinators and other beneficial insects are "the heroes of the vegetable garden," says Lisa Mason Ziegler, a flower farmer in Newport News, Virginia, and the author of Vegetables Love Flowers. Zinnias, cosmos, sunflowers and other annual flowers, in particular, attract pollinators, which also visit the vegetable plants' blossoms. A row of flowers increases the garden's population of beneficial insects, which help control the bad bugs, Ziegler says. Planting annual and perennial flowers in and around a vegetable garden also improves the harvest.

Of all the flowers Ziegler grows on her flower farm, zinnias are perhaps the most popular both as pollinator plants and as cut flowers. Their voluptuous blooms are colorful landing pads for butterflies all summer long, and picking flowers for bouquets encourages even more flowers. Children love their bright colors, of course, but adults can't resist them, either. New hybrids broaden the appeal: These include zinnias with sophisticated bicolored blooms, festive stripes and designer colors, such as salmon, lime and champagne.

The benefits of modern hybrids aren't all reserved for the home gardener. Hybridizers also benefit when new introductions are more resistant to pests and diseases and thrive without pampering. These tough new plants help growers conserve energy and resources because they require less-intensive greenhouse management. To be sure, breeders and growers want gardeners to have show-stopping, colorful landscapes, but flower power has already kicked in long before you ever see a bloom.

SOURCES:

-- The National Garden Bureau (ngb.org) and All-America Selections (all-americaselections.org) are sister organizations that promote proven garden performers. This year, the National Garden Bureau's "Year of" program features lavender, lantana, hydrangea, iris and corn. All-America Selections tests new plants in trial gardens across the country and recognizes the best-performing selections every year. The program was established in 1933, and many AAS winners have become garden classics. The AAS winners for 2020 include a coneflower (Sombrero Baja Burgundy), nasturtium (Tip Top Rose) and rudbeckia (American Gold Rush), among others.

-- Since 1990, the Perennial Plant Association (perennialplant.org) has named an outstanding perennial as its plant of the year every year. Featured plants are versatile, adaptable and pest- and disease-resistant; they hold their own in the garden even when they're not blooming.

-- Vegetables Love Flowers, by Lisa Mason Ziegler (Cool Springs Press), promotes companion planting for beauty and productivity. Her book includes plans for kitchen gardens full of flowers to attract pollinators and beneficial insects, and to increase the yield of vegetable crops.

Take care of your plants, and you're taking care of the planet: There are lots ways to make a difference for the environment and keep a beautiful garden, too.

Landscape architect Pamela Conrad grew up on a farm in Missouri and took her love of nature and the outdoors out west, to a professional practice in San Francisco, where she puts environmentally smart landscaping ideas to work. Her climate-positive design initiative, launched for landscape architects and garden designers, was founded to help these professionals manage the carbon footprint of their projects. But the concepts she advocates apply just as well to our own backyards. Even a tiny garden can conserve precious resources.

Right off the bat, it's important to put certain assumptions aside. "People associate green with good, and that's not always the case when it comes to high-maintenance, high-resource landscapes," Conrad says. Typical lawns, pampered with frequent watering, pumped up with chemical fertilizers and maintained with gas-powered equipment, are actually carbon emitters, she says. In projects large and small, reducing the size of a lawn saves resources in many ways -- including reducing the amount of time and energy spent on its maintenance.

Homeowners "have lots of opportunities to make a difference in the way they design or maintain their landscapes," Conrad says. One easy way to support a healthier environment is to plant more trees, she suggests. Trees, especially deciduous trees, are environmental heroes that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it, which helps slow the warming of the earth's atmosphere. Conrad also recommends reducing the use of hard, impermeable paving, substituting with gravel or permeable paving, so rainwater can seep into the ground instead of running off into storm drainage systems. She suggests using compost or organic fertilizers instead of chemical fertilizers, and, in her projects, she specifies native plants wherever possible. Although her projects tend to be large in scale, these practices are all perfectly appropriate for home gardens, she says.

Conrad's toolkit for designers (on the Climate Positive Design website) lists dozens of tips and ideas for environmentally friendly landscape practices. If you're redesigning an existing landscape, you may be able to reuse existing pavers or bricks in a new design instead of sending old materials to a landfill, she says. She also advocates planting in layers -- with a canopy of trees, an understory of shrubs and groundcover perennials -- to give a garden dimension and character, to reduce runoff and to create habitats for birds, butterflies and other pollinators.

The positive results of these efforts are not just a matter of speculation. In case studies of design projects, Conrad discovered that making a few changes -- such as planting more trees and shrubs, reducing lawn area and using permeable paving instead of concrete -- made a significant difference in the projects' carbon footprints. The changes reduced the carbon footprint by 80 percent or more in some cases, and often shaved 20 years or more off the time required for a project to achieve the final goal of becoming carbon neutral.

By encouraging designers to make a few environmentally friendly design changes, "within the next 10 years, we could take more carbon dioxide out of the air than we are emitting," Conrad says. It's a lofty environmental goal for garden professionals, but it also pays off economically because environmentally sound landscapes cost less to maintain than designs with extensive lawns and plants that are not adapted to the site.

Regulations of emissions are already moving to the forefront of environmental policy in every region, but there's no reason to wait for regulations, Conrad says. "We have ways to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere every day." Her pathfinder tool, and the projects she and colleagues are already working on, are designed to set an example right now, to help inspire change. Ecologically smart landscaping is "a type of activism that does not require policies," Conrad says. You can be an environmental champion in your own backyard.

SOURCES

Landscape architect Pamela Conrad is a principal in CMG Landscape Architecture (cmgsite.com) in San Francisco, California, and the founder of Climate Positive Design, climatepositivedesign.com. Anyone can access the resources and information on the website.