‘The Garden Path’: A garden for your spirit

Independent columnist Tanya Crowell. /Tanya Crowell photo

By Independent columnist Tanya Crowell

There has been a lot of talk lately about how wonderful gardening is for our health.

It apparently balances our circadian rhythm, produces endorphins that lower our heart rates, supports our immune system through contact with soil bacteria, and generally prolongs our life.

All great, but I don’t garden to have a longer life. I garden to have a better life. To enjoy being on earth and to meet the natural, even as I try to manipulate it. It is a paradox, for sure.

We get out there and dig, weed, deadhead and plant, in every instance intent on reigning in nature’s ways and yet somehow the whole process brings us into greater appreciation of Mother Nature herself.

Part of the reason I think this happens is no matter how hard we try to mold nature our beds and borders will always be a composite of our efforts mixed with the hand of nature’s ways that ultimately rule. All gardeners have experienced the plant that grows too tall or won’t take off or delightfully, the plant grouping that mix so beautifully or catch the light just right.

There is a stone in my garden that reads: “Gardening is 10 per cent inspiration and 90 per cent perspiration!”

We make tremendous effort on behalf of our great plan with no guarantee at all it will work out. When it does or sometimes turns out even better than imagined, we are in ecstatic awe. Now there is something to feed the body and soul! When the plan fails, we must find resolve and learn an important lesson that helps us become better gardeners.

In the end would you have it any other way? How boring if every effort were rewarded exactly as planned. Part of the excitement and anticipation of planting is the unknown result. No matter how well we plan for the mixing of colour, texture, size or season, we cannot see in our mind’s eye how it will be until it happens.

The end result will be determined by light, weather, winter and even wildlife. In spite of so many variables, we always do the work hopefully and that is the best benefit of gardening.

Gardening gives us hope. Every gardener exists in past, present and future, all at once. Embedded in our actions of planting lies hope that this plant will do better than the one last year. That it will be full and lush three years further on.

In “A Life in the Garden,” Penelope Lively wrote: “A gardener is able to see incipient promise everywhere.” 

Now that’s therapy. A gardener by their activity is embedded in a world filled with wonder, fertility, relationship and co-creativity. We see potential everywhere. We see the possibility of beauty in every dusty corner. We see potential for success even after failure because we learn from our mistakes.

We revel in the sun on our backs and faces, and the earth under our fingernails.  We are part of the earth we work. We know its taste and it knows the taste of us. It is good for us because it feeds our souls, and anything that does that is good for our bodies.

If any of what I’m saying speaks to you as an experienced gardener or encourages you to give gardening a try, I’m thrilled because that’s the aim of this column. But I’m also aware that gardening is a practical activity, so join me next month when I’ll share my garden hack for fall bulb planting. Until then, enjoy your garden. 

Tanya Crowell is trained as a master-gardener and lives and gardens on eight acres in Northumberland.