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I used to wonder how it was that two people of like intelligence could open a cookbook and follow the same recipe and produce two entirely different results - one heavenly, and one quite leaden. I began to understand it though, when I began to garden. I used the same book others who had beautiful gardens had used - I read it carefully, took notes, drew up plans, shopped carefully and practically used a grid to plant things as they should be planted.

But my garden didn't look anything like anyone else's.

Two people, or a thousand people can follow the same basic "recipe" for a good garden - and yet no two gardens will ever come out the same. Some will be quite successful; many will be good first efforts, which will be refined over time - and a few would be utter failures.

So perhaps it is right to warn the new gardeners - or those who have dabbled but are starting to get serious, about the mystique in gardening that few ever really warn us about.

1. Even if you do everything right, things will go wrong.

It's true. Should you be of the compulsive type who has explored every nuance of gardening, had the soil tested and researched each and every plant you install, you will still not get perfection. A vole will race through his little tunnel, stopping periodically to munch away the roots of your prize delphinium. A hailstorm will punch holes in both leaves and flowers - and what they don't get the slugs will. You may have drought - of floods. Or you may have purchased a mislabeled plant, so that while the one you meant to buy would have loved your garden, you ended up with a finicky relation that doesn't like its new home.

These failures are not always your fault. They are tests to see if you really have the kind of character to garden and enjoy it. If you like challenges, you will rise to them.

2. Most of us will NOT do everything right. It's not for lack of trying. One thing every passionate gardener soon learns is that the more you know, the more you find that you still don't know. There are some things about gardening that even the most expert of experts can't explain. So why should we mere mortals be able to?

Every year you will learn from your mistakes - and every year you will do more and more things that are right. Not everything - but more than in each prec

3.Even the most rank beginner can have undreamed of success with plants that others fail with. That's part of what keeps us going. I know I've always had splendid success with Heuchera. The owner of

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