What Gardening Taught Me

I walked out onto my “estate” lawn early this morning before the debilitating brick wall of heat hit and surveyed my yard. The grass is an Ireland green. The tulips whose explosion of color and shapes flagged in a new season have strewn the ground with their petals. A few survivors out of synch with the others still stand alert and erect.

All over the yard the fists of daisy flowers are budding at the waving top of the plants. And two roses are blooming where I recently buried them along the chain link fence.

The ground was cool and night damp under my bare feet and I was seeing the lessons of being a partner in a garden for almost thirty years.

The bleeding heart that I had moved to various places in the yard and wilted down to a survival only size this year is busy, expansive and holds an elegant Victorian curve branching with perfectly formed hearts along the length of each flowering stem.

The daisy plants I purchased to put into a distinct area are now joining the violets and buttercups to replace what was grass in my lawn.

The columbine are egoically large this year. They are no longer flowers but have pushed themselves ambitiously into bushes hiding less compelled flowers.


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The garden is full of lessons. A plant in one place with wither, lay on the earth and be gradually re-absobed. If it is moved to a more supportive environment, it will rest and recover and become unrecognizably spectacular.

Peonies need support. Pansies need sun and space. Roses need daily watering. And if something is in the wrong environment, it will fail to thrive.

All gardeners know nothing is ever done. Being responsive to conditions and willing to change your mind is important.

And so gardeners learn about themselves. What once was failing, the dream or the idea may need only some mindful shifting or restructuring. This year is not the goal, this garden in 2018. The goal is to learn what the plant wants, what support it needs and for the mindful gardener to know when he or she has simply mistaken the decision. Forget Me Nots used to bloom in my front bed but now they will not survive.

If it isn’t working, change the structure, change the plan and wait. There is a time to dig the entire idea out… roots and all and stop trying to grow it. There is a time to move the plan to another place, environment, surrounding. And there is a time to simply persist and wait. After all, my bleeding hearts and Columbine are magnificent beyond all past years.

The single thing a gardener learns is when to wait, when to adjust and when to release the idea. There is a relationship between intention, the plan, the environment and the earth. A gardener knows, we are just part of a larger system.

We step back and learn.