Why?
We work, we drive here and there, shop for groceries, stand in lines, hustle when we have to, forget to take personal breaks because our attention is required by those around us, yet in spite of unending demands some folks make time to garden. Some are mathematicians, some are carpenter’s wives, some are less lithe than 30 years previous, yet when it is time to plant carrots, that’s what we do… and pull weeds and stir the compost. Why?
Gardening gets a person outside, and being in the company of what nature offers has been proven to calm us down. A person tending plants in pots on a porch gets to feel the breeze and sunshine and hear birdsongs and let the news of the day fade away. Being in natural surroundings is palliative – a chance to refocus and slow down.
It’s not unusual for me to realize in the middle of a morning my dirty fingernails still bear witness to the previous day’s gardening. Cultivating around plants, adding handfuls of chickweed to the compost, watching to see if seeds sprouted yet, scratching in soil to plant more seeds, watering on time and not too much, harvesting for the evening meal – it’s a healthy ritual if a person chooses it, and not everyone does.
Mahatma Gandhi stated, “To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves.” Soil under fingernails is a reminder that time spent nurturing plants is nurturing ourselves. Meditation is one way of grounding oneself, and tending a garden is meditative. Gardening is indeed the quintessential way to get grounded. A gardener will squat or kneel to carefully thin the turnip seedlings in expectation of a healthy meal someday, but the focus is on that moment.
Besides squatting and kneeling, a gardener assumes positions for which yoga teachers have names, such “right arm reach without tumbling on marigolds” or “exotic winning Twister spread” or “octopus am I.” Gardening exercises body parts that would atrophy with too much sitting. Thank you, gardening.
Liberty Bailey lived from before the Civil War ‘til Eisenhower was president. He was an avid horticulturist and successful author who helped initiate the agriculture extension office system and 4-H. He came up with the word “cultivar” and Cornell University named a building in his honor. He wrote, “Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended energy on them.” In other words, garden yoga.
Plus, gardeners get a reward when plants being tended bloom or bear fruit. “Look at my petunias!” a distant neighbor might hear on the breeze. As precious seedlings mature, gardeners get to learn about insect pests and how to work with natural remedies or learn when to discard the damage and start over. Darn. Lesson learned, but gardeners don’t stop there. We’ll do it differently next time.
That’s because plants are educators. They teach us the soil needs amending by turning a bit purplish. I was in my garden looking at the pansies, and they were looking at me. “No complaints, and thanks for the nice shower” is what I heard. However, in a bed down the hill, cabbage seedlings – their luster fading – were wondering when their soil would get amended. Fair question, and thanks for the message.
When the effort and communication (and weather) work as intended, gardeners and their plants can produce harvests so abundant, sharing is called for, and this creates community which is a good thing. You might need backup if, for example, you take a trip to Germany.
When there are extra seedlings at the beginning of the season, give them away. When your tomato plants set a new Olympic record, give some away. When folks run from you because you’ve already shared, you get to expand your community.
And gardens are a work of art. Shapes, colors, designs reflect your imagination. Robert Breault stated, “If you’ve never experienced the joy of accomplishing more than you can imagine, plant a garden.”