Now a messy potting shed is not a bad thing, mind you. It's sorta' like the most brilliant people have the worst penmanship, or the best cooks the messiest kitchens. Or at least that what I like to tell myself ... (grin)

Coming up -- the office of the plant manager, ta da:

The office:

So come on with the pictures guys and no fair cleaning it up before you take a picture. If your pictures make me look bad -- I don't care; but for heaven's sake don't leave me hanging out here all by myself ... LOL

Prize to be announced later.

This is not my contest photo, but thought this was the best place for Roselee to see this old post.

Okay, waiting for pictures of your heaped up messy sheds. If we can't grow all the pretty flowers that we wanted to in this heat/drought we can at least show evidence that we tried. If our sheds are neat it shows we spent time cleaning it up rather than being out there in the war zone planting, watering, fertilizing, weeding, propping, tying, edging, dragging, digging, turning, inspecting, tweaking, sweating, enjoying, and on and on ... :-)

The back porch and patio where nearly all my potting stuff, tools and junk are right now.
Yes, there's room in the garage for it, but the garage is just too far away and its an even bigger pain to haul everything back and forth.

a close up of the back corner, you'll have to tilt your head. for some reason it won't display correctly. I have to keep most of it on the upper shelves due to, well... you'll see why later in the post:

close up of the actual area I use to pot stuff up:

another pile of stuff, again tilt your head. :)

here's more places I have stuff stashed:

The reason for the fencing across the porch and why I can't seem to get anything done or finished around here:

Grand Baby #5. The others are older and don't slow me down as much as this one does!

As to the mess, well I can see why you need a dedicated area to get everything in one place. It will be sooo nice and save you a lot of work going back and forth. But even with my shed I pretty much do the potting/painting/fixing/mixing work along the whole back property line. Here's a boring tour of that area.

BTW, I'm always amused to see those prim little potting benches that people don't want to mess up. REAL gardeners have a REAL mess behind the scenes ... right?! (Well, prove it ... LOL :-)

First is the other side of shed. In the winter it's totally crammed with tender plants ...

My fancy AC system. Well, it Conditions the Air by moving it around. Works great except for the year the wasp built a nest in it and it belched a bunch of wasps. I don't know who was more surprised -- me or the wasps ...

Bob built this nice potting bench right out the back door of the shed. I use it mostly for preparing plants for rooting. It doesn't always look this nice, but I try to keep it fairly neat so it won't look too messy to the neighbors although they are seldom outside. Rooting mix is in the trash can ...

Actually this is where I do most of my potting. I work directly out of the buckets of home mixed potting soil stored here ...

I keep it covered with a tarp when not in use. On the left is the compost pile in which I pitch yard trimmings. We improved its looks this year by surrounding the wire fencing with plastic lattice ...

Down the walk a ways is an old picnic table that I use for various projects; preparing hanging baskets, painting small pots, fixing stuff. I cleaned off the paint paraphenalia a couple of days ago to start working on one of the $2 mirrors from Rozanne's junk yard. I've always wanted mirrors in the garden so we'll see how that works ...

This is a holding area for things waiting to be planted or passed along, alias: the pot ghetto ....

Another pot ghetto outside the shed holds plants for swaps, etc. ...

One last thing to show you is the old rake head from Rozanne's place that's been put to new use to hold small garden tools ...

Okay, you got a tour of the back forty. so to speak. And you got a tour of Melvalena's 'mess' -- so let's see yours.

Can you match our muddle???

Can you surpass it??? :-)

Omar

But maybe I should do something about this mess by the back door ...

But the point is there is a certain poignant beauty in a jumbled stacked up mess. We all have them. It's like the back side of a beautiful embroidery with all of its knots and loose strings. It's nothing to be ashamed of, but to laugh about. It proves we are at least doing something.

Anyone else care to give us a 'I'm not the only one' chuckle ...?

So you wanna see my mess? Here's some from my yard...

The shed this morning. Those dead plants by the fence are from last winter's freeze. Think I should give up on them yet?

The potting area is over by the deck for now. This is where Neal put the potting soil when he unloaded it.

Here's the messy reality. The deck currently under construction with an extension for screened porch. The rest of the garden tools are over to the right by the stairs.

But I'll be glad to get it all off my porch and patio.

Most likely there will always be that stack of stuff right outside the back door.

Thanks everyone for sharing your ugliness as well as your pretties.

Another one...

At least we did get one big mess cleaned up. I know this is supposed to be about messy garden stuff, but this was back in March...

Looks like this today. It's still messy and there's a lot more to do, but at least you can walk through there. Just got the fence finished last week, we installed it ourselves with fence from craigslist and the gate is from Habitat Restore.

Wow, and I love the brick playhouse. Yes, the beginnings of some serious recyling :-) Thanks for posting your photo too. It's so nice to see your smiling face to go with your other pictures. Plus I really like your shoes. They are better than the taped and glued garden shoes I'm still wearing. Well, at least they're still comfy.

Melvalena said, "I'm starting to not feel so bad about my mess. It looks like everyone else's! :)" Right! And truer than we know.

Shirley, it's nice to look back on old pictures and see progress! Yea!

Mel- that little blue eyed 'mess' you have on your patio is precious!
Jim

Thanks Jim, I think my little blue eyed mess _is_ pretty precious, even when he gets into stuff he shouldn't.
(which is ALL THE DANG TIME!!!!)

Plantmaven, Its good to see you have the same kind of 'mess' the rest of us do.

Now, Jim... ahem.... we're waiting.....

PJ, it is amazing to sit here and see them out the french doors.

This is my potting area.

The potting bench.

This big wooden box is completely full of nursery pots, and the platform is for storing bagged goods.

Directly across from the potting bench, is the mist table, where I root cuttings.

Rooted cuttings are usually potted up in 4" pots and kept here on these benches behind the shop.

Then when they are moved to 1gal. pots they are moved to the driveway in front of the barn.

My "work station" on the patio.

Other gardening necessities.

They say confession is good for the soul, but I don't know.
Jim

Don't _you_ feel better? :)

Now be honest. You went and cleaned everything up before you took pictures, didn't you?

As for the rest of us we'll just have to concede that some people are neater than others and that's okay. It works for them. This is what works for me ...

Kathy I can relate to how nice it is to have a dog grooming table. It's a great place to stack the mess and feed the birds!

And right, I don't believe there is any getting rid of the necessary collection of stuff by the back door, but I AM going to work on it. But darn, by the time I get done in the yard I am so hot and sweaty I just sling the stuff anywhere I can. As someone already said on one of these threads gardening is a 'dirty' job.

Seriously Jim, you are a great gardener and your behind the scenes photos, while not the worst of messes, do show that beautiful gardens require some working spaces that is not always as neat and lovely as the gardens they produce. Thanks so much for posting your pictures. For some people they may be a revelatory documentation in how much stuff is collected to have a yard full of plants and not only that, but they show what's needed to be able to pass them along. I LOVE IT! :-))))

For new gardeners who may either be envious of some of the gardens or aghast at the mess -- just wait -- your time will come.

/evil laugh