Landscape Architect Articles

Cultivating Achievement06-10-16 | Department

Cultivating Achievement
Editor Mike Dahl

Plan your life and live your plan, a colleague once said to me as way of explaining his secret to business success. To my younger self, it did seem to make sense: bolstered by the fact that this person who was about my age was making quite a bit more money than I at the time. However, the ensuing years did not treat him particularly well. Not that they treated me much better, but I learned, as I hope he did, about the inherent flaw in his words of wisdom.

This topic could lead into deep philosophical waters where I'm sure I would drown, but that is not where I want to take it. I just want to talk about my vegetable garden.

Even though I grew up in the farm-rich state of Montana, the ability to grow food was not a given. I was a city kid, residing in the suburbs of Great Falls, population never over 100,000 but that is big in the Big Sky state. We did have a vegetable garden in our backyard, but my mom and dad took care of it, and we never had to depend on it for anything more than the novelty of having food actually growing in plain sight.

My current vegetable garden was certainly not well planned. When my wife and I bought our house almost two decades ago, there was a delineated section in our backyard, which I always suspected was the remnants of a dog enclosure, and my first thought was that a vegetable garden would fit well there.

It took a few years but I finally did plant that section. And the novelty of growing food returned. There were bountiful harvests and some not so much and I didn't give it much concern. Last year I didn't even turn the dirt – I just threw bags of amendment on top of it.

But this spring was different. I not only turned the dirt, I pulverized it. I added at least twice as much amendment as usual and for the first time, pounds of homemade compost –thick, dark and oozing. Then I prepared for the most exciting time – the appearance of those first green shoots that would undoubtedly lead to a bumper crop thanks to all my planning.

Two weeks later only a few seedlings had made it above ground. By the fourth weekend I dejectedly decided to buy new seeds and replant, worried I was facing a bigger, and unknown, problem. But as it turns out I wasn't. The new seeds seemed to sprout even faster than their packets predicted. And once again I was reminded that no matter how much planning one does, successful results do not always occur based solely on that. Flexibility, adaptability and even humility are much needed parts of any strategy that hopes to succeed - whether that be growing a garden, or a business.

Here's hoping that this season is a fruitful one for your business.

Mike Dahl

As seen in LC/DBM magazine, June 2016.