An Ode to Gardening

 

After finishing planting my little vegetable garden, I feel great. The rototiller gave me a better workout than the gym, and my new kneeling pad with rails on each side is a godsend to help me get back on my feet. 

It was inspirational getting my hands dirty sowing seeds while breathing in the scent of lilacs on a sparkling spring day. For me, planting a dead-looking seed husk is a sacred ritual. After gestation in the dark soil, the seed resurrects itself, bursting forth as a green shoot, vibrantly alive, full of pulsating cells common to all of us, both plants and animals.

Of course, it is not just me who feels this way: Peck, a good friend of mine now sadly deceased, labored daily into his 80s, wearing his Birkenstocks,  joyfully tending his gardens big enough to feed a village. That’s despite the fact that he had survived 5 heart attacks, he said, leaving him with “only half a heart.”

Oliver Sacks, a well-known author and neurologist, was another true believer, as I learned by reading a just-published posthumous collection of his essays.^⁠1 “I cannot say exactly how nature exerts its calming and organizing effects on our brains, but I have seen in my patients the restorative and healing powers of nature and gardens, even for those who are deeply disabled neurologically.”^⁠2

When I had my psychotherapy practice, my patients who were gardeners seemed to fare better than those who weren’t. It was even more pronounced with Sack’s neurologically impaired patients: He wrote that for them, gardens were “vitally important,” often more “powerful than any medication.^⁠3

In one example, Sacks’ elderly patient with Parkinson’s disease often found herself frozen, unable to initiate movement. “But once we led her out into the garden, where plants and a rock garden provided a varied landscape, she …could rapidly, unaided, climb up the rocks and down again.^⁠4

Above all that,  Sachs firmly believed that gardening greased the skids of the creative process. I know it works for me, helping me with my writing: detoxifying the trauma and heartbreak of the daily news, making room for new fresh thoughts to pop up like delicate new flowers in spring.

Maria Popova has collected quotes from artists from across the centuries who have written about the wisdom of gardening.^⁠5 The great painter Joan Miro attributed his success to working at nature’s pace: “I work like a gardener… Things come slowly… Things follow their natural course. They grow, they ripen. I must graft. I must water… Ripening goes on in my mind.”^⁠6

The revered botanist and nature writer Robin Wall Kimmerer extols gardening in her book “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants,” while observing that children often dislike gardening. That passage resonated with me because my mother, like Kimmerer, grew extensive vegetable gardens that required my help, a task I often resisted.

Kimmerer writes, speaking of her children, “They complain about garden chores, as kids are supposed to do, but once they start they get caught up in the softness of the dirt and the smell of the day and it is hours later when they come back into the house. Seeds for this basket of beans were poked into the ground by their fingers back in May. Seeing them plant and harvest makes me feel like a good mother.”^⁠7 –  just as my mother was, both personifications of Mother Earth.

That completes my ode to gardening except for this warning: When digging in your garden and planting your seeds, don’t wear gloves – particularly those hideous latex ones that doctors use –  because dirt has been found to be good for you. Research now shows “that people who grow up on farms, for instance, have lower rates of Crohn’s disease, asthma and allergies, likely because of their exposure to a diverse array of microbes.^⁠8

xxx

¹ Sacks, Oliver. Everything in Its Place Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

²

³ Ibid. p. 245

⁴ Ibid

⁵ https://www.themarginalian.org/2019/05/27/oliver-sacks-gardens/

⁶ https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/09/17/i-work-like-a-gardener-joan-miro/

⁷ https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/02/29/robin-wall-kimmerer-braiding-sweetgrass/

⁸ https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/well/live/dirt-health-benefits.html#:~:text=Scientists%20have%20long%20known%20that,a%20diverse%20array%20of%20microbes.