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Don't bother asking Susan Bauers to identify all the plants she tends in her Ham Lake garden.

"I'd love to tell you, but I don't know," she said.

She isn't even sure which ones are weeds and which were intentionally planted.

Bauers didn't create her garden; she's just doing her best to keep up with it. And gradually she's putting her personal stamp on it, adding plants that are special to her and finding ways to streamline the workload.

She's hardly alone. Inheriting a well-established garden -- without the know-how to keep it thriving -- is an increasingly common challenge in today's mobile society.

"We hear it a lot," said Peggy Poore, owner of Uncommon Gardens in Minneapolis, who has worked with many rookie gardeners seeking help with their newly acquired plots.

"It doesn't have to be an elaborate garden, just any garden," she said. Novices often assume gardening is more complicated than it is and that they won't be able to master it. "Gardening has this crazy mystique. But it's not voodoo or rocket science. Usually people are excited but overwhelmed -- and a little freaked out."

Those mixed emotions are what Bauers remembers feeling three years ago when she and her husband bought their house -- and the garden that came with it.

"Garden" is an understatement. The Bauers' landscape includes several large gardens, filled with thousands of plants, many unusual, covering hundreds of square feet. "It's humongous," she said. "People who visit are always amazed at the variety. There are things they've never seen before."

Bauers wasn't a complete garden novice; she usually planted a few familiar annuals each year. "But I didn't know a whole lot," she admitted.

And while she was happy to be inheriting such a beautiful, established garden, she was also intimidated. "I was excited; I love flowers. The scary part was I knew it meant work. I'm not that naive."

To help assess what she was in for, Bauers brought her garden-savvy sister for on-site consultation. "I asked, 'What am I going to do with this garden? I don't have a clue,' " she recalled. Her sister reassured her that most of the plants were perennials.

Too many to count

The garden's previous owner was happy to share her expertise. Before moving on, she walked through the garden with Bauers, who was armed with a notebook, identifying plants and offering care tips. "That was a step in the right direction," Bauers said, "but I got lost after 100."

The first growing season was a bit of a mystery.

"I didn't have a clue whether something coming up was a weed or not," she said. "I still don't." She decided to err on the side of caution, and not yank until she saw what a plant looked like. "If they flower, I figure they're OK."

To educate herself, she turned to garden books and the Internet, sometimes bringing pieces of plants to nurseries for identification, and even submitting a photo of one plant to the "Mystery Plant" feature in Home & Garden. (Readers identified it as a candy lily.)

Bauers began to keep a garden journal in which she jots down notes about plants and pests, along with a coded spreadsheet to identify different sections of the garden. "That's been helpful to me," she said.