Why We Garden

Last year a few gardeners from my church decided to organize. They called themselves, appropriately, “Gardening Group.” I didn’t join. I wanted to garden, not talk about it. “I’m a solo gardener, not a groupie,” I thought.

A few meetings into their year, the group planned a tour of De Jong Greenhouses and invited me. I had been to De Jong greenhouse years ago when it was a red sea of poinsettias. I wanted to see it again.

Mark De Jong led us through space after cavernous space of mums, impatiens, roses. . . . He told us about flooding the tables with fertilized water, preventing disease, maintaining temperatures, creating artificial darkness to set bloom, refrigerating plants that bloomed too early. Listening, I knew that running a commercial greenhouse demands a far more expertise than my two decades of experimentation with perennial beds. If I make a mistake, I replace the plant and learn a lesson. If Mark makes a mistake, his livelihood may be in jeopardy.

But my interest in the group was piqued. The dozen people on that tour shared my loves, my hates, my feelings, my fascinations, and my questioning. Sometimes we knew names and habits of the plants, sometimes we didn’t. Sometimes a few of us lagged behind the tour, comparing notes. Other times a few plunged ahead, drawn toward the beauty of a new cultivar.

I became a gardening group convert. In the months that followed, I joined them in visiting local gardens, meeting to exchange plants, and attend gardening seminars. We shared frustrations, we shared joys, we shared knowledge, and we shared lack of knowledge. Gardening was an exciting common bond with people I had only nodded to in passing at morning worship.

I asked them about their reasons for gardening, and I met my self. If I had to find one umbrella term for their answers, it would be the same thing I discovered on that De Jong greenhouse tour: it gave us all pleasure. But they articulated that pleasure in ways that gave me insight into my own—and increased it.

Even though none of them were trained writers, they were so passionate about gardening that they became poets.

Here are twelve of the reasons they gave:
-Therapy, peace,
-Accomplishment, creativity
-Eating produce (for the vegetable gardeners)
-Being outdoors
-Exercise
-Discipline
-Beauty
-Surprise
-Digging in dirt
-Worship

And, having listed their reasons, I’ve run out of space for details. Those will follow in future blogs.

Meanwhile, you are welcome to email me at gardensetc@gmail.com and tell me your reasons for gardening.