By MAUREEN GILMER, DIY Network

Divide and conquer your budget problems. That's the gardener's secret to a cheap or free landscape without purchasing a single new plant. The key is perennials, which are herbaceous plants that do not produce any woody stems or twigs. They sprout anew from the roots in spring and then die back to the ground again at the end of fall.

Between work, kids and taking care of a growing family, there isn't much time for flower gardening. But if you can manage a moment here and there, you need not forsake the wonderful world of herbs. Their scent and flavor, beauty and charm touch every woman's heart.

"Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions."

Longfellow's words are so true, for more people have abandoned container gardening over impossibly high expectations than any other reason. And unrealistic expectations are the rule, not the exception.

Crystal asked me what's wrong with the roses at her new home. It's a wonderful old place with extensive gardens where two plants have her baffled. The roses aren't blooming, she says, and they don't make hips, either. She wondered if perhaps they had grown too old to bloom, and should she replace them.

Alice May Brock, who inspired Arlo Guthrie's famous '60s song, "Alice's Restaurant," knew that flavor is key to culinary culture: "Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good."

The quiet peace of Buddhism has inspired many to seek a more contemplative life. There is no better way to find this deep sense of harmony than in the garden. Landscapes created in the Far East have evolved to reflect the basics of this spiritual path. They take various forms, from the complex Japanese tea garden to the minimal gravel field of Zenlike spaces.

Flowering plants first appeared just 130 million years ago, which is modern history in evolutionary terms. For 300 years before the first flower, its predecessors were evolving from the most primitive single celled algae to complex land plants. Oddly enough, many of these primitive fellows are still alive and well today. We're just not tuned into them because they lack color flowers.

Tulip planting is impossibly bipolar. It's split between spring and fall making the span between ordering, planting and flowering at least seven months apart. What inspires us in early spring as these magnificent plants bloom is often a faded memory by the time fall bulb planting season rolls around.

The sound of tires on gravel always brings to mind English manor houses on "Masterpiece Theater." You expect a Rolls Royce to deliver over-dressed nobility into the hands of waiting domestic staff. And in Jane Austen novels, young ladies in their elaborate Victorian dress stroll along gravel lined flowerbeds.

It's hotly debated whether the fierce Carib Indians of the Island of Guadalupe were cannibals. So named "Canibales" by the Spanish to describe their ferocious defense against the invaders, it is more likely that this tribe was mislabeled.