Lessons From The Garden
There are a lot of reasons people have for gardening. For most, it gives them a chance to be outside, add some beauty to their yard, improve the environment, or grow food that tastes good. Those are all reasons that I enjoy working in a garden…whether it is mine or yours. On the most basic level, we could lump all of those into one reason…it gives us pleasure.
Over the years, I have found a few side benefits from gardening that have helped me be happier at a deeper level. Working in the garden is great for helping us to accept change, deal with imperfection, and build patience.
Like most people, I hate change and I naturally resist it. If a piece of software makes changes to how it works, my first thought is to ask why the company insists on trying to fix something that already worked perfectly well. Many people think about gardening like painting. We lay out the plants and once they reach their “mature” size, they are forever frozen in time…with the same plants continuing on forever, at the same size, and same place. But that is not how nature works. Once a plant goes into the ground, a process is triggered in which plants start competing with each other, wildlife and the weather…some plants thrive, some survive, some die and some reproduce. Some plants are well behaved and stay where you put them, while others are strong-willed, like a stubborn child, and go where they want to go. On top of that, plants, some of which weren’t ones that you planted, start appearing in any uncovered spot in the soil.
As a gardener, you have 2 choices. First, you can resist change. Continually replace the plant that keeps dying out. Remove or cut back the plant that is spreading to keep it in the same space and same relative size to the rest of the planting. Pull every single weed and faithfully refresh your mulch. In my experience, this will forever leave you disappointed in your garden. Alternatively, you can accept change. Allow the plants in your garden to start moving around with the understanding that your garden won’t look exactly the same from year to year. If something dies out, try something different or let one of your more successful plants fill the void. Allow your plants to go to seed and be curious about where you will find their seedlings the next year. It is still ok cut back an aggressive plant to keep it from completely taking over a planting. But don’t try and keep it the same size as your slower growing, less aggressive plants. Better yet, try adding in an equally aggressive plant next to it to help keep it in check.
I am also a recovering perfectionist. When something is off, be it a spreadsheet or a garden design, I feel the need to work on it until it is perfect. I wake up at 4 in the morning thinking about what is off or what changes I could make…sometimes it literally drives me mad. But gardening is messy and imprecise. Most notably, weeds continually pop up…pull a weed out and 1 week later another one is already taking its place. It’s like a game of whack-a- mole or one of those Zen Buddhist meditations on an unsolvable riddle. You will NEVER get all of the weeds and have it stay completely weed free. In terms of plant selection, you would think that it would be able to analyze a site’s soil, sun, moisture, climate and be able to only choose plants that 100% work there. But soil is a mix of sand, silt, clay and organic matter that can vary quite a bit throughout the yard…20 feet away could be different depending on the site’s history. A site’s sun exposure changes throughout the year. Weather can vary drastically from year to year. On top of that, when buying plants, you don’t always know where they came from. Even if buying from a local nursery, the plant might be a clone of a plant that was adapted to a different locale or soil. As much as I try to get plant selection right (and my plant selection is much better than it used to be) all of the time, I still make mistakes. No gardener is 100% because there are too many variables/unknowns to be right 100% of the time.
In dealing with messiness and imperfect results, you again have 2 choices. Beat yourself up over every weed and failed plant choice or do the best you can in the time that you have allotted and accept that you won’t be perfect. I still struggle with this. But it makes gardening (and life) much more enjoyable when you can accept some imperfection.
Lastly, gardening is great for building up patience. Plants grow at their own pace, which is often dependent on the weather. This impacts when plants start growing in the garden, when plants are available at the nursery, and when gardening work should be done (i.e. when to plant, when to prep a new bed). Going against nature’s timing usually results in poor outcomes. You might be able to plant your new garden in July, but your plants will struggle and require far more care than a planting installed when it is cooler. You might be able to mechanically remove your Bermuda grass lawn in March to make room for a new bed, but by August, that new bed will likely be filled with Bermuda growing from leftover root fragments. Better would have been to delay the project by 6-9 months and kill off the Bermuda over the summer when it was actively growing.
This time of year, my patience is always tested when I am waiting for perennials without evergreen tops, especially those planted the year before, to push through the soil and start putting on new growth. When I don’t see a plant starting to grow in the spring, especially if I see it growing elsewhere, I start getting worried. In years past, I have given into my inclination to take action, by either giving them water (after a wet spring, lack of water must be the reason they aren’t growing, right?) or deciding they must have died over the winter and need replacing. But more recently, I have tried to take a more relaxed, patient approach and let nature do its thing. As an example, last year, I planted a Ruby Dwarf Sweet Joe Pye Weed in a number of spots. In one spot, one of the plants popped up towards the end of March. 3 weeks later there was no sign of growth from any of the others…2 of which were located right next to the one that was now 1’ tall. During those 3 weeks, I felt like I should be doing something to either get them to start growing. Last year’s stems still felt firmly rooted…but my gut and bias towards action still told me I should be doing something. But I was patient and avoided doing anything. Earlier this week, when I checked on them, I found new growth sprouting up on the remaining 4 of them. Patience was rewarded. Looking back, there are a number of possible cultural reasons for the delay…differences in shading, soil moisture, soil composition (sand, silt, clay, organic) or mulch levels which could all impact the message the plant is receiving telling it that Spring is here and it is time to start growing. Sometimes the best course of action (in the garden and life) is to wait to see how a situation unfolds and try to learn from it.
Enough philosophizing, I need to get away from the computer and do some work in the garden. I hope that this helps you to take a softer, less self-critical and more patient approach to working in your garden. What has gardening taught you? I would love to hear what lessons you have learned from working in the garden.
