Nicole's Quick Take: A beautiful garden is like having a little piece of paradise in your own backyard, and, yes, it's worth the investment. A vacation gives you about a week away from your life once a year. A well-built garden gives you a getaway every single day.

The Backyard I Never Want to Leave

Last summer I had a few girlfriends over for dinner in my Nashville garden.

We strung lights between the arch trellises, and the tomatoes on the table were still warm from the sun a few hours earlier.

When someone asked about our next family trip, I told her I wasn't sure if we needed one this year.

I built this backyard to be a vacation I get to take every single day, and I've never regretted investing in it.

A Vacation Ends, But My Garden Never Does

Every time I post a picture of one of my gardens, someone asks about the price.

It's funny to me. Nobody blinks at the cost of a week in Cabo, but suggest spending less than that on your own backyard, and people suddenly get cautious.

I've never understood the disconnect.

A garden is a getaway you can go to every single day of the year.

• A vacation gives you about a week of escape, once a year, if you're lucky enough to take one at all.
• A garden gives you that same feeling of escape every single day you're home, closer to 350 days a year than seven.

I haven't even started talking about the food yet. That alone changes the math on what "worth it" really means.

You can absolutely build a garden with nothing but a shovel and a packet of seeds, and I want every beginner to know that's a completely legitimate way to start. BUT if you have the means, I don't think there's a strong case for keeping your garden bare-bones while spending freely on everything else in your life.

Why not make it as beautiful as you can afford?

What Actually Makes a Garden Feel Like an Escape

A resort feels intentional. Every path, every bench, every view was placed on purpose.

Most backyard gardens don't get that same level of planning and treatment. And honestly, that's usually the only thing standing between a plot of vegetables and a space that feels like an actual retreat.

A few things make a huge difference:

• Real structure. Multiple raised beds on top of a gravel base give a garden defined edges and clean lines. I still tell every new gardener that quality cedar raised beds are the first thing worth investing in, because everything else in the space builds off of it.
• Something vertical. A trellis does more for the feel of a garden than almost anything else I've added to mine. My Nicole Arch Trellis is the piece guests mention most when they're standing in my garden at golden hour, and it's one of our most requested pieces for exactly that reason.
• A place to sit down. Somewhere to sit, even just a single chair tucked near the beds, turns a garden from a task list into a destination. Read a book, drink your coffee or tea, and relax.

The Research Backs Up What My Body Already Knows

I don't need a study to tell me that twenty minutes in my garden resets my mood, but the research backs it up anyway:

• Multiple studies on gardening and mental well-being show that it reduces stress and anxiety.
• According to the Virginia Cooperative Master Gardener program, even short sessions, ten to thirty minutes, are linked to feeling calmer.
• That same research links regular gardening to fewer reported symptoms of anxiety and depression.

That's the part a vacation can't compete with. A trip resets you for a week, then you're back to the same stress.

A garden resets you on a Tuesday afternoon, a Sunday morning, and every day in between, for as long as you keep enjoying it.

Your Home Feels the Investment Too

If the emotional case doesn't move you, the financial one might.

A well-designed garden can increase the value of your home.

According to the National Association of REALTORS®, homeowners who complete outdoor remodeling projects report a typical Joy Score of 9.7 out of 10, and 68% say they have a greater desire to be in their home.

Ninety-two percent of REALTORS® also recommend improving a home's curb appeal before selling, and a well-designed kitchen garden is very much part of that curb appeal now, not an afterthought hidden in the back corner.

You get the daily joy of the garden while you live there, and then you get some of that investment back if you ever sell. Definitely a win.

And Then There's the Food & Flowers

I keep coming back to this because it's the piece people forget to factor into the math. According to the University of Missouri, a modest investment of around fifty dollars in seeds and supplies can return hundreds of dollars worth of vegetables and flowers in a single season, depending on what and how much you grow.

Add that to a beautiful space you'd want to spend time in anyway, and the "expensive hobby" framing starts to fall apart.

Save Money on Fresh Produce & Flowers:

• Tomatoes for salsa, sauces, and slicing straight onto a sandwich
• Lettuce and other greens for a salad you can walk outside and cut in five minutes
• Peppers for roasting, stuffing, or tossing into fajitas
• Cucumbers for quick pickles or a cool addition to any salad
• Basil and other herbs for pesto, garnish, or a pot of sauce that actually tastes like something
• Zucchini and summer squash for grilling now and zucchini bread later, once it inevitably takes over
• Strawberries for snacking straight off the plant, which is how mine always disappear before they make it inside
• Zinnias for vases and centerpieces.
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I'll be honest, I don't grow food to save money. I grow it because homegrown tomatoes taste like nothing from a grocery store, and because handing my kids a strawberry they grew themselves is worth more to me than the receipt. But if you need the spreadsheet to justify the raised bed, the spreadsheet is on your side too.

You Don't Need to Do It All at Once

I've built gardens in Houston heat, Chicago winters, and my current mild Nashville climate, and the gardens I'm proudest of were almost never built in a single weekend.

If you're deciding where to put your money first, here's the order I'd actually recommend:

1. Start with quality raised beds. This is your foundation, and cedar that's built to last will outlive three seasons of a cheap kit falling apart.
2. Add one trellis. Even a single Nicole Arch Trellis or panel trellis instantly makes a bed look designed instead of improvised.
3. Don't forget your tools. A tool kit you enjoy reaching for gets used more often than one buried in the shed.
4. You can always expand later. Your garden can be as sprawling as you want.

You can spread this over one season or three.

What matters is that you're building toward something you actually want to spend time in, instead of settling for something that just technically grows vegetables.

Two Mistakes I See Most Often

• Waiting for "someday." Someday you'll have a bigger yard, more time, more money. Meanwhile, a smaller, well-designed garden you build this year beats a perfect garden you keep postponing.
• Buying cheap the first time. Untreated wood that rots in two seasons or a flimsy trellis that bends in the first storm ends up costing more over five years than paying once for something built to last.

That's really what this comes down to for me. A well-built garden works like a little paradise you get to visit every single day, right outside your own back door. If you can make yours a little more beautiful this year, I don't think you'll regret it.