ADHD-Friendly Gardening - Part II: Maintenance & Consistency

Welcome back to ADHD-Friendly Gardening, Part II of my interview with Insa, The Garden Witch, at Spite & Bloom! Last week we talked about getting started - finding the one next action, building systems for your worst days, and why killing your garden is data, not a personality flaw.

A glamour shot of my garden when everything is perfectly tidy and operationally and I have not yet started the ADHD neglect cycle.

Quick context for anyone jumping in here: this series grew out of an interview with Insa - a garden coach, fellow neurodivergent, and the brilliant mind behind Spite & Bloom, a newsletter for gardeners who want to grow things without it becoming another source of stress or shame. If you missed it, go check out Part I: Getting Started - "Starting When It Feels Impossible" before jumping back here!

This is Part II: The Stop-Start Cycle. This week we're going deeper into the part that gets most of us: what happens after the hyper-focus wears off and real life shows back up. We're talking consistency, routines, accountability, and the single triage question that has saved more of my plants than I'd like to admit.

Part II: Maintenance & Consistency - “The Stop-Start Cycle”

Insa: How do you work with the stop-start nature of ADHD when a project needs consistency?

Raised garden bed overrun by marigolds, with a basket of yellow tomatoes freshly picked.

Rachel: I stopped trying to maintain consistency and started designing for intermittence.

Consistency is genuinely not available to me at will. Some weeks I’m super invested in my garden. Others I’m traveling for work or distracted by different commitments. Sometimes I just forget, and keep putting off chores day after day until weeks have gone by without my noticing. My plants do not care about my intentions. They just need water and care.

So the drip system exists to compensate for my inconsistency. It runs on a manual timer. My job was reduced to: set it up once, refill when necessary, check for over watering for the first few days (when my attention is still on the garden).

Automate it, delegate it, or simplify it down to almost nothing. Then show up for the parts you actually enjoy.

Insa: How do you build ADHD-friendly routines that don't feel like chores?

Rachel: For me, the word "routine" has a lot of failure energy attached to it. I have built, destroyed, and rebuilt more routines than I can count. So now I think in terms of "repeated small actions" instead. Easier entry. Less shame when I miss one.

I build habits as small as possible and attach them to things I already do, this is a technique we use in coaching called habit stacking. My "routine" is not "weed the garden every morning." My routine is: when I refill the coffee maker and hit brew, I go out into the garden and look at each plant. Usually it’s pretty easy to figure out what needs my attention and the task is time bound with something enjoyable (coffee) so I’m not as likely to get pulled off track or sucked into hyper-focus, though that can and does still happen occasionally.

Insa: What helps routines work for people with ADHD or AuDHD, even when consistency is difficult?

Rachel: Three things that actually move the needle for me:

Environment design over willpower: The slower I have to think about something, the less likely I am to do it. Put the thing where the action happens. Make the easy choice the default choice.

Automation for the non-negotiables: If something has to happen regardless of my energy level - watering, feeding, scheduled tasks - I take myself out of the loop wherever possible. Timers, auto-orders, calendar reminders with actual context in the description.

Document the wins & lessons (not failures): I planted a chaos bed and learned from it. I am mapping it this year. That is forward motion. A lot of neurodivergent gardeners spend energy cataloguing what went wrong and skip past the evidence that things are improving. The map I'm making this year? That IS the system working.

Insa: What kind of accountability works best for ADHD/AuDHD brains?

Rachel: Not the kind that punishes absence. That's the fast lane to shame and avoidance.

What works for me: accountability that is curious, not evaluative. Someone who asks "what happened?" without the subtext of "why didn't you do the thing?" Those are very different conversations.

For the garden specifically, the accountability is built into the system itself. The drip timer doesn't care if I forgot. It ran. The plants are alive. The body-double accountability just gets me out and gives me a protected time to focus. Human accountability partners work best when they are genuinely interested in problem-solving alongside you, not checking whether you performed.

Insa: What tools or systems help track progress without becoming overwhelming or another chore?

I totally forgot what I planted here! Bell peppers?

Rachel: The lowest-tech version that still works. For real. I cannot stress this enough.

My current tracking system is a hand-drawn map of my beds, with what I planted and when. That's it. I am also planning to note what grew and what didn't at the end of the season - but that’s optional.

Apps worked for a month or so. Planting journals went stale. Spreadsheets decayed. The more complex the system, the more likely I am to abandon it the first week I'm busy and then it starts building its own debt. Paper and a pencil live in the garden. That's the system now.

My new rule: if the tracking system takes more attention than the garden, replace it with something smaller.

Summary & Up Next

The through-line across everything in this installment is the same: stop designing for the version of yourself that has unlimited energy and perfect follow-through, and start designing for the one who forgot to check the garden for two weeks. Automate the non-negotiables. Stack the habits onto things you already do. Use the lowest-tech tracking system that still works. And when everything feels equally urgent - ask what actually dies today, and do that first.

Next up is Part III, and honestly it's the one I needed most - spotting the signs of over-commitment before your nervous system sounds the alarm, navigating the ADHD burnout cycle, and how to start again without the shame spiral swallowing the whole project. See you there. 🌱

As always, have a beautiful week and go touch grass!

--Rachel