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Few things can compare with walking on a scenic woodland trail lined with wildflowers. Now that it's officially spring, I recently took a hike in Quail Hollow Ranch County Park to see what I could find.

With each new season, we start fresh with high expectations for a bountiful harvest of vegetables and mouth-watering fruit, fragrant flowers to pick for bouquets and healthy plants to attract beneficial insects to the garden. As the months pass, it seems one problem after another crops up.

Maybe we can't improve on Mother Nature but can we learn from her to make our own gardens more beautiful. My late summer travels this year took me to Lake Mary in the Mammoth Lake area where I began to get ideas. This small Sierra lake formed in a depression in the glacial moraine below majestic Crystal Crag. Dozens of small streams keep the meadows blooming with wildflowers even in August. Huge granite slabs and obsidian domes create an impressive landscape. Everywhere I looked I saw how the plants, stone and water came together to make a combination that would look incredible in a regular garden.