It depends, somewhat, on whether it’s a garden that you planted or that you understand—because understanding what is planted where helps to address when to expect each plant to emerge and when its neighbors will/how that shadow might affect what comes up next to it, etc. Plants have different needs in terms of feeding, watering, pruning, staking, deadheading/encouraging subsequent blooms, and harvesting. If you don’t understand the types of plantings you have, it is more difficult to care for them/meet their needs.

Essential Garden Care

If you know what you have, you’ll understand how to water and feed what’s there. That’s part of caring: watering and feeding appropriately. This means keeping ultimate soil conditions—adding compost and mulch. Also add soil conditioner, salts, or acids according to the needs of the plants. Another part of caring for a garden is ensuring that it has no competition from weeds. I would define weeds as other plants that appear near what you have installed because they want to avail themselves of the water and food you are caring for your plants with. So: you will need to remove the competing weeds. This can be very time-consuming unless you commit to doing it frequently.

Effective Garden Pest Management

The garden also needs protection from pests and disease. This requires examining your plants and their environment regularly. You need to know which plants are vulnerable to which pests, specifically, because there are particular weeks in your season to look for certain fungi or bug eggs, etc. You will need to clear the debris that can accumulate from falling plant matter away from the base of your plants…many pests use such debris to hide on or feed on. You’ll need to protect your plants in other ways, such as creating barriers to keep people from walking on them. Making sure the soil around perennials doesn’t become too compacted usually means placing stepping stones throughout that you can use to maintain the beds. Some plants need shelter for part of the year with heavier mulches, baskets, or tarps to deal with winds, sun, or cold extremes.

All of these are short-term or, immediate, caretaking plans. The most considerate care for a garden is planning its longer-term relevance. As some plants fade out, there are choices to be made about whether to replace them with the same or something different. Many plants will need to move around over the years, depending on how they perform in one spot vs another. I would say that record-keeping and photo documentation are some of the wisest ways to care for a garden.