I know that at least a handful of times in my life I’ve heard the story of a grown avid gardener describing the moment when their fascination with gardening began. They describe how they carefully prepared the soil, looked at the seed with wonder before tenderly placing it in a perfect hole, and then attentively observed each day to see when the sprout would poke its tender green head above the soil to say hello. Because of the excitement they felt, it was in that moment that they knew gardening was for them.
I don’t know if I wish I had had a similar experience with gardening, but the story about how my passion for it grew reads very differently from the above scenario. In fact, it started out with very little happiness or joy. I can’t remember quite what age I was, but my dad certainly thought I was old enough for pulling weeds and using a hula hoe, so Saturday mornings began at 6 AM out in the garden when the air was still cool and I was still tired.
Planting
This routine began some time in late elementary school and continued on until I left for college. Almost every weekend without fail and sometimes on weekdays I would spend time out in the garden, sometimes with my dad, sometime without, pulling weeds, turning compost, harvesting, pruning, thinning, tilling, etc., ad infinitum. It started out as a chore that provided me with no pay or other compensation besides sore muscles and fatigue, and usually by the time I finished, the only thing I was interested in doing was eating food and playing a video game.
Sprouting
Halfway through high school, my dad no longer had to wake me up on Saturday mornings. I knew it was coming and so I preempted my dad’s wake up call by already being awake before he came to get me. I think that my attitude toward the garden had shifted from a sense of obligation to a sense of interest, the difference between having to do it because I had to and because I wanted to.
My favorite times of year were when we would get out the tiller. I was old enough and big enough to operate it and so my dad would show me what needed tilling and I would wrangle that old Troy Built Horse tiller to turn up the soil. Perhaps I started wanting to work in the garden more because it became a safe place where my dad was able to entrust me with responsibilities, trusting that I could figure out ways to accomplish them with my own ingenuity and skills. The more trust my dad placed in me, the greater desire I had to do the job, and do it well.
After high school I spent a year away from college before heading out for two years on a church service mission. During that time I had no opportunities to work in a garden. The first thing I did when I got home? I went out to the garden to work.
Growing
What had happened here? Somehow distance from the garden had cause my heart to grow fonder of the work that I once did there. It became a way to start each day. Dew weighted down the leaves and there was a cool heaviness to the air. Somehow, through no conscious effort of my own, I had grown to love the garden. I enjoyed all of the different tasks that a tended garden required of the gardener. I enjoyed the smells of active compost, musty tomato vine, and crisp citrus. I enjoyed how ripe squash, healthy soil, and a shovel felt in my hands. The sights of bright reds, verdant greens, muted yellows, and deep purples were synonymous with the colors of a healthy garden. And finally, the crunch of fresh green beans, the tender flesh of vine ripe tomatoes, and the sweetness of a perfect, golden peach became the flavors of reward for my time spent out in the garden. I had arrived at love. I worked in the garden because I loved it, and I loved the garden because I worked in it.
The Great Drought
And then I went back to college.
Wanting so badly to conform to the cultural expectations of going to school to get an education for the purpose of acquiring a job, I found extreme difficulty settling on a major. It was a 3 year tug-of-war between studying things that I wanted to learn about and studying things that I thought would be practical for finding a career after graduation. I settled on Humanities. A peculiar choice, but one that I believe set me up for a lifetime of pursuing knowledge and learning in fields that were of interest to me. However, during this whole time in college, I was denying my gardening passion. College was a busy time and I managed to fall out of the pace that nature teaches in its natural processes, and instead wholly subscribed to the schedule that my education and work demanded of me. I felt rushed, overwhelmed, and tired. A lot. Looking back, I now realize that I wasn’t designed to feel that way. I was starved to reconnect with a more natural pace of life, but I had no clue.
Water of Life
Fortunately, I married after college, and since then I have had the opportunity to volunteer on two farms and grow some crops of my own in a small community garden plot. That reconnection to nature through gardening has proved to be the single most regulatory physical activity for my sense of sanity in this life. When I’m in a garden or on a farm, life is good, life makes sense. There is happiness and order in a garden, and there is so much for us to learn and understand through observations of nature’s cycles and patterns.
A healthy garden makes for a happy human, and a happy garden makes for a healthy human. I am so glad that over time I came to fall in love with gardening.
What about you? What is your gardening origin story? Or, if you haven’t started gardening yet, what do you hope to get out of gardening when you start?
Healthy Garden, Happy Human 