I need to mulch.

Mulching is a garden chore. Although it provides a great benefit to the plants by keeping roots cool, suppressing weeds, stabilizing soil moisture and temperature, and generally  making things tidy, I cannot deny that it’s not nearly as sexy a task as, say, installing new perennials from the nursery.

But in gardening as in life, pedestrian tasks outnumber the exciting ones by a wide margin. One secret to having a beautiful garden is to carve out regular time to maintain things. A second secret is to make peace with having to do those maintenance tasks. Whether you prefer to perform maintenance tasks once a week in a morning-long go, or choose instead to take 10 minutes every evening after dinner, glass of wine in hand, to tidy up one planting bed, finding what works for you and practicing it is what achieves the objective in the long term.

Changing an…