Second-hand gardens aren't necessarily second rate. In a hand-me-down garden that becomes yours when you move into a new home, there's often a lot to build on, but there's also plenty of room for your own ideas to take root and grow.

Don't be in too much of a hurry. When you've just moved into a new house, especially in the winter, you don't really know what may be hidden in the soil, such as spring bulbs or perennial flowers. It makes sense to allow yourself time to get to know your property, observing the patterns of sunlight and shade through the days -- and the seasons. You might want to buy a garden bench and try it out in different spots to encourage yourself to spend time outdoors, where you can keep an eye on how the garden develops through the year. There may not be much of interest, or you may have hit the horticultural jackpot.

While you're inside unpacking the dishes, arranging furniture and hanging pictures, take time to study the views of your landscape from the windows and try to imagine yourself in the new garden.

In the meantime, you could grow some of your own favorite plants in flower pots or in a community garden plot in your neighborhood. Joining a community garden is a great way to get a feel for local conditions: People love to share what they know with a newcomer. If you brought plants with you from your previous garden but are not sure where to put them, establish a nursery area on your new property, so your plants can be settling in while you decide where they will flourish. This is also a great time to visit nearby botanic gardens to look for inspiring design ideas, get to know local plants and check on interesting plant combinations.

Working with a professional designer -- especially if you have moved to a climate you are unfamiliar with -- will help you make a smooth transition from a hand-me-down garden that's not entirely pleasing to a satisfying landscape that reflects your tastes and interests. Designers are good at recognizing the bones of a good old garden, and they can also help you avoid common mistakes, such as investing in plants that you may be familiar with but that just aren't right for the climate into which you have relocated.

Inheriting a landscape designed to please someone else can raise a lot of questions, but don't feel guilty if a previous owner's dream garden simply isn't your thing, says Laurin Lindsey, a garden designer and the owner of Ravenscourt Landscaping and Design in Houston. "Sometimes people just don't go out there -- they don't feel connected" to the landscaping around a home if they didn't have anything to do with its design or development, Lindsey says. "If they have just moved into a house, it may take them a year or so to decide if they want to personalize it."

Lindsey's clients are asked to fill out an extensive questionnaire to help her interpret their needs. She asks clients about their favorite plants and colors, and she wants to know whether they're interested in a vegetable garden, flower beds, a patio or an attractive naturalistic habitat. Their responses to questions about specific details and more general gardening and lifestyle attitudes form the foundation for a successful design collaboration, she says. (Her robust questionnaire is available on her company's website.)

Some of the existing plants in your new garden may prove to be long past their prime. "People get worried about ripping old plants out, but it's fine," Lindsey says. Others may be a little overgrown, neglected or the victims of enthusiastic but unfortunate pruning jobs, and they just need time and care to recover. Often, small plants will benefit from being moved into more sun or more shelter. With this kind of editing, you can do a lot to freshen things up and make the garden your own.

Existing trees are another matter. If she can, Lindsey always tries to save mature trees. An arborist should be brought in to do some professional trimming work, if necessary. "It's hard to get a mature tree; you have to wait a long time," she says. "Trees provide shade, and birds live there. You can't re-create that just by putting in another tree."

No two projects are alike. Some clients decide they'd just as soon get rid of every trace of a previous owner's garden and start from scratch, Lindsey says, even if the existing landscape has been well maintained. Others are eager to reinvigorate and re-imagine their hand-me-down gardens without stripping away the foundation of a strong design. Regardless of which approach is taken, a good designer will have the same ultimate goal: "It is really important that your client be able to have a garden they love and connect with," Lindsey says.

Even working with a designer, it takes time to achieve the results you're after. But while taking the first careful steps -- getting your bearings in your new landscape, gathering ideas, distilling your thoughts -- the satisfaction of turning someone else's garden into your own can be enjoyed immediately. Settle in, study the possibilities, check out the neighborhood, ask a designer for help: The threads of your new garden will start to come together out of the old.

SOURCES

-- Lauren Lindsey is a garden designer and owner of Ravenscourt Landscaping and Design (ravenscourt.us) in Houston. The company's website includes Lindsey's questionnaire for clients, which is a useful guide for anyone planning a garden renovation.

Lindsey is on the board of directors of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (apld.org), a national organization of garden designers with regional chapters across the country. On the APLD website, you can see award-winning residential landscape designs, read the organization's quarterly magazine, The Designer, and find a landscape designer in your area.

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.

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.

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.