IT'S THE BEGINNING of a brand-new year, so let's envision a perfect world. There will be peace, of course, and enough food for all, but let's also consider the gardener's perfect world. This requires horticultural agreement among the household members. Great gardens have been created by great partnerships. Take Sissinghurst (pictured), England's most visited private garden. It was the work of Vita Sackville-West and her author-diplomat husband, Sir Harold Nicolson. He designed the garden of linked "rooms" and she was responsible for the plantings. Closer to home, Peggy Abkhazi and her husband, Prince Nicholas Abkhazi, created a tourist destination in Victoria. The couple had no children, so the garden was essentially their child, Peggy said. They tended it lovingly. Today, the 1.4-acre Abkhazi Garden has been preserved for its distinctive beauty and its fabulous collection of rhododendrons. Wise couples learn compromises to avoid stepping on toes. After many years of heated discussions, my friends Peter and Inie have divided garden responsibilities; he grows the vegetables while she raises the herbs and flowers. In another garden, David hauls huge rocks in his front-end loader for Joanna, who creates stone garden walls with vertical precision. Men often have an affinity with machinery and are happy to manage the larger aspects of a project, if they can be trusted not to mow down the infant fruit trees (a true story). Also, machines love straight lines, so the mower rider may chafe at curvy beds that defy the turning radius. Good partnerships develop with time. Once, I lived with a man whose idea of lawn care was engaging the services of a chemical company whose employees parked their logo-laden truck in our driveway and soaked the grass with something nasty even as I wrote earnest books about organic practices. The lawn became so fertile that the shrubs alongside it grew lazy, forgetting how to flower. Our relationship didn't flower, either. I found a more understanding family, but my stepson, Steve, and I clashed when he claimed the entire property for football practice. Somehow, the football always landed in the peonies. His father, John, yearned for acres of daisies and lupins like that on the property of his mentor, Freeman Patterson, who lives (alone) in New Brunswick. Ever the mediator, John managed to toss the football with Steve, provide me with machine power when necessary and photograph our small but somewhat Freeman-like beds of poppies and lilies. Meanwhile, visitors wondered why I, a garden writer, hadn't created the Canadian Sissinghurst. Acreage Life managing editor Sheila Robertson, also hoping for an Eden-like garden, endured her husband's preference for what she calls "an informal, natural look, letting tall grasses and weeds grow as they will." The resulting forlorn and ragged seven-acre yard soon became infested with meadow mice. That convinced her husband it was time to give his wife's vision a try. Closely mown lawns now reveal the natural slopes of the landscape, and the mice have taken off for denser pastures. Sheila's and my experiences are typical, if what I've heard while visiting horticulture clubs is any indication. Lawn versus flowerbeds, straight edges versus curves, sports versus arts, synthetic pesticides versus organic methods, compost versus weed and feed, cats versus birds, red flowers versus pink, blue spruce versus almost anything else. There are so many decisions to make, it's a wonder more gardens don't reflect a mish-mash of conflicting opinions. Maybe this is the new year miracle. It's not perfection, but something even better: simply the desire to combine different viewpoints into a beautiful landscape. - JENNIFER BENNETT Jennifer Bennett welcomes feedback at jben@ca.inter.net or via acreagelife.editors@producer.com.