Why I Garden
PIckled beets. That’s the quick and easy answer to why I garden.
Somewhere around grade 2 or 3, I had the notion that I should have a garden in the backyard. My parents, both non-gardeners, showed me the tools and told me to “go at it”. They purchased some seed for me and I turned over an area about 8×8 (seemed a lot bigger then) to plant my seeds.
No fertilizer, no water, just seeds in the ground. Hey, I was 8 with no background or experience. I just thought it would be interesting to have a garden.
The only thing that grew were the beets. Everything else either didn’t germinate (buried too deeply I suspect) or croaked under the clay soil and lack of water. But I harvested beets. Lots of beets.
My mom cooked some up – and I was singularly unimpressed. At that point, my entire gardening life hung in the balance while I was eating these red, rather tasteless chunks (salt really improved the taste I quickly discovered). But my mother was somehow inspired and pickled up the rest of them (I discovered years later the only way my dad would eat beets was if they were pickled).
I loved pickled beets. I couldn’t even begin to describe how wonderful they were – so I won’t. Let it simply be said that I fell in love with pickled beets. But I decided that the “gardening experiment” was interesting but not worth repeating.
Moving to the farm meant we had to have a garden. Having to find a way to make a living (I didn’t want to continue on the government ladder to success) in the country meant (among other things) having to learn how to garden successfully. This involved taking numerous courses at local colleges, correspondence courses with universities and hours of digging and working to figure it all out.
So between the pickled beets and the need to conserve income (and maybe make some money) I became a somewhat accomplished gardener.
Now of course, I’m a full time garden writer. I get paid to garden and write about those experiences. How cool is that! 
So now I also garden for my income and while the days are long, it’s a heck of a lot better than the nursery and garden with the 2am dead-furnace alarms (where you had 10 minutes to get the heat running or say goodbye to 20-grand worth of flowers). Now all I worry about are Internet-outages.
But that’s not why I still garden because I’d garden even if I weren’t writing about it. My garden would be different. It wouldn’t have all the trial beds and experiments going on – I’d stick to my favorite plants but I’d still garden.
My garden keeps me young and it keeps me whole.
The young part comes because of the physical work involved, Gardening is intense exercise with a great deal of bending, stretching and just plain good old work. You only lift a few pounds at a time but you do it over and over again. The last month or so I haven’t been able to work (screwed up an ankle big time) and I can feel my general fitness level decreasing (not to mention having put on 4 pounds). So gardening keeps me fit and active.
Gardening keeps me young. I plant trees I know I won’t see to maturity but I don’t care. I’ll see them grow up somewhat. I plan for next year – there’s always going to be a “better” next year when you garden because there’s always some plant that screwed up “this year”. It’s been that way for the 30 years I’ve been gardening, I don’t expect it to change any time soon.
Gardening involves me in a world beyond my understanding. The complexity of life in the garden and the complex relationships between all participants are a constant source of interest and amusement. Trying to understand just what happens when I make one single input or change can take a lifetime of study. Watching researchers finally start to “get it” that if you spray to kill off one sort of pest, the results reverberate right through the entire ecology. And trying to find the minimum input necessary to garden successfully means studying my garden as I’d study any other puzzle. And given the changing nature of my garden, it’s an ongoing puzzle that I can get better at but never succeed totally at solving.
Gardening gives me an expression to experience something beyond my spiritual world. There’s a silence in the garden that can’t be described. There’s a life-force there that can only be experienced and that is part of the blessing. As much as I’d try to write about it, I come up short every time. I simply accept that now I’ll never try to describe the ineffable, simply live it.
And oh yeah, the pickled beets. I really garden for the pickled beets.
I love pickled beets. I need to learn how to pickle them.
@Katie – I’m the “eater” not the “pickler”
I get to grow ‘em, harvest ‘em and eat ‘em but somebody else has better culinary skills than I so…
I garden so I can compost. Well, that is probably an exaggeration, but one of my favorite things about gardening is taking care of, and improving, the soil. I like the physical activity especially in spring when there is so much to do. I find deadheading very relaxing. I love the color but am never able to make myself cut off the blooms to bring in the house. I once planted a cutting garden in an out of the way place but then wouldn’t even cut those blooms. I even enjoy tearing out the annuals from my containers in the fall and moving the pots into the barn. I like digging the potatoes as I need them, but don’t enjoy picking tomatoes or cutting mesclun. I love cutting the asparagus and picking strawberries daily for the first week of production, but less so the second two weeks. I like being able to determine the direction and strength of the wind by looking at the ornamental grasses. I like reading about gardening on Doug’s blog and newsletter.
Jan
It gives me PEACE.
I, too, love the silence the garden brings. “My” silence has the background comfort of a river flowing lazily toward the ocean with the occasional screech of a hawk defending his kill in the field next to us.
I was raised in the country during a time when a garden was a necessity. Mom, however, also had a passion for flowers. So, not only did I enjoy pickled beets, canned tomatoes, fresh frozen beans, peas and corn; but I experienced the joy a fresh boquet of flowers can bring to someone who was sick, lonely or just lived in an apartment in town.
The garden is the place I can work out problems, de-stress, soak up the sun of the first warm Spring day, and count my blessings. All these things are the reason I garden.
Thank you Doug. I share all your feelings, except maybe pickled beets – it was my grandfather’s rhubarb and plums, and my aunt’s tomatoes that hooked me. When I garden, I feel I’m giving back, giving back to the earth and to the world for life and good fortune.
I agree with gardening keeping one young. It certainly keeps me young. Knowing that there is always something to do in the garden or something garden related to read about gives me another reason to get up in the morning…. even when it’s cold and the bones are a bit achy.
Oh smart smart man!! Pickled Beets- not only YUMMY but absolutely beautiful- those fire red beets and white onions in a jar- what could look or taste better!!
I garden so I can be outside and enjoy all the of plants’ colors, textures, smells, tastes, and sounds. The garden is a retreat, a rejuvenator, and an exercise regimen all in one. It’s a place to be alone with my thoughts while my hands are busy, and it’s a place where the senses are satiated and both the body and the soul are fed. It reminds me that there’s a whole world of animals and plants living and reproducing out there while I’m working, sleeping, watching tv, or whatever, and it gives me a connection to that world. It’s fresh air and fireflies, butterflies and bees, flowers and fruits. There’s disease and death, too, to remind me that life is short and to enjoy all my blessings while I have them.
I garden because it gives my joy and it is such a miracle. Every time I look out and see what beauty there is in the yard much of it from a little seed or bulb or corm or tuber I am amazed and happy. To sit out and just enjoy what has happened from spring to fall makes me realize what happiness is. It may sound corny, but its the truth.
I actually wrote a whole book on the “why” of gardening. Here’s my short answer:
“Every time I thought about not doing a garden this year, my heart rebelled. I _had_ to have flowers in the spring. I _had_ to have vegetables in the summer. I _had_ to tidy it all up and wave it goodbye in the fall. I _had_ to plan the next one during the winter. . . . Because that’s how I measure time and stay connected to my humanity — that is, my humanness, a child of the universe in self-aware mammal form. I am cousin to the plants and animals and birds and bugs despite physical isolation from them brought by all the miracles of today’s world that keep us warm and safe and dry and fed. Yet the natural cycles of day to night, spring-summer-fall-winter, birth-growth-death-rebirth, run constant through our lives no matter what else is going on. So keeping a garden keeps me in tune.”
–Carolyn
Chris is SO right about the de-stressing. On 9-11 when I got home from work I went straight to my garden.
I actually wanted to start gardening around the same age. I started a garden around 10 or so, but not really knowing how to properly make a garden, most of my vegetables were eaten by animals. I didn’t try again until I moved out of my house into my own place and now I grow a garden every year. I love to garden as it just provides so much including fresh produce, relaxation and spending time outdoors. When I have kids, I hope to get them into gardening as well and be able to spend time with them while doing so.
I garden because it gives me back every effort I put in into it tenfold. I studied horticulture at university and although I loved working full time in the field it was my personal gardens that give me the moset satisfaction.
As others have said, it bring peace and satisfaction. I have gone through some very trying times and yet when I am outside gardening, the cares fall away and I end the day with a smile on my face and happiness in my heart.
I garden because I love having my hands and mind in MOTHER EARTH; When I work in and with earth, digging, planting, shovelling, banking, separating, lifting, everything related to gardenning keeps my mind off things that are sometimes bothersome and things that I have to Accept, that I cannot change. I like perspiring in the garden and sitting down on the ground with a green garbage bag underneath me and leaning into the work I do in the garden and then I sit amongst the flowers and feel so healthy and relaxed. Yours In HAPPY HEALTHY GARDENING
I forgot about the dead-furnace alarm. Oh the things you black out of your childhood memories.
Note to self and sibs: More pickled beets for Dad.
xo
Doug,
I really enjoy your blog, even here in Oklahoma City, Ok..I garden because: I work a lot…lots of hours…real estate..so I am always ‘on call’…My gardening relieves my stress, gives me back a perspective of what is really important..I talk to God aloud, have sometimes cried, smiled lots and my greatest ideas have been out there in my private garden…