What Are Your Ten Commandments In The Garden?

There are times you can tell how you are going to feel about a book half way through the introduction. This happened to me today when I picked up a Christmas gift “The Authentic Garden Five Principles For Cultivating A Sense Of Place” written by Claire E. Sawyers. Instantly I new this design book for all North American gardeners is likely to become a dog eared reference. By page seventeen I had the same feeling I get when I meet someone new and know instantly we will be fast friends, so to give this books it’s proper due I will report later on pages 18 thru 274 but for now I thought I would share the following (excerpted excerpt??).
“I’m indebted to the late Sir Peter Smithers, although I never met him, for outlining his clear principles to garden by and for setting an example that has inspired me. A career politician, he developed a celebrated garden at Vico Morcote in Switzerland and wrote with indelible clarity about how he did it. In an article I clipped out of a magazine years ago, he outlined the ten personal “commandments” he held dear and followed in creating his own garden. He reiterated them in his book, Adventures Of A Gardener (1995, 2-3):
1. The garden shall be a source of pleasure to the owner and his friends not a burden and an anxiety.
2. It must therefore be planted so as to reduce labor to an absolute minimum, and the amount of work must diminish as the owner grows older.
3. Any plants like palms or conifers that would contradict the nature of the surrounding deciduous forest should be rigidly excluded.
4. All plants in the garden must be of a permanent kind: no annuals, biannuals, or plants or plants requiring lifting in winter or special attention.
5. The planting must be dense so that the plants live in a self sustaining community with one another, with little space for weeds to grow and little need for support.
6. The plantings will be varying compositions according to the lie of the land with no repetition. The visitor should be surprised at every turn of the path with a new plant community different from what was seen so far.
7. At all levels planting distances are such as to form a canopy.
8. No plant is added to the garden if there is in existence an obtainable superior form.
9. Difficult plants, if not successful after a fair trial, should be abandoned for easier subjects of which there are plenty.
10. No plant is ever sold or exchanged. All plants are available to serious gardeners, stock and labor permitting. The pleasure of owning a fine plant is not complete until it has been given to friends.
These clear and practical principles really resonated with me and I plan on posting this list where I am likely to set eyes on it a few times a day. Now of course this is the season of gardeners resolutions, it is so easy to fool ourselves as we dive into yummy gardening books filled with wonderful advise that this will be the year that we follow strictly our own gardening ten commandments. Honestly I have become so good at lying to myself that each summer I am surprised when it is clear that I have slipped into my same old bad habits. Share with me if you will your list of gardening commandments.