Should know better
Bramble & Briar #176
Nature hands you a welcome pack whenever you take on the responsibility of a new garden. It’s full of things like excitement, potential and belonging. A little brochure that speaks of opportunities for healing, sanctuary, and self-discovery, with full page ads leaning heavily on the lifestyle imagery. By rights it should also contain a small bundle of seed packets tied together in twine, a pair of lightweight gardening gloves (those Niwaki ones with the nitrile coating) and a homemade flapjack or three to keep your energy up while you’re pruning the buddleia but, since we’re dallying here with the metaphorical, you’re probably going to have to sort that lot out for yourself. Or visit a few stands at a horticultural trade show.
What inevitably (and, I believe necessarily) manages to sneak in among all the enticing welcome pack goodies is less immediately appreciated – the triumvirate of overwhelm, decision paralysis and frustration. If you meet a gardener who claims never to have had to deal with these weird sisters, they’re either introspectively oblivious, fibbing, or AI, and quite possibly all of the above at once.
I have been encouraging people (it’s kind of what I do) not to get down upon themselves about the state of their garden, or to beat themselves up about their perceived horticultural failures. The folk who’ve come onto my garden coaching programmes in the past few weeks have been bearing the familiar scars, and you know, I don’t mind saying I’m thankful for that, since I’d not have the faintest idea of how to go about helping them had they not. Just think about it for a minute – imagine looking at your garden and thinking you were getting everything right, or knowing exactly what to do about everything, and having it all completely in hand? Or never knowing that nagging feeling that you could be doing something better. This is more than about just growing things. This is about how we make sense of our place in the world, and how we best make use of the agency we’ve been given, in order to leave our mark on the world.
All of which sounds a bit highfalutin – it’s only gardening, after all – but then I’ve never seen why the humdrum and quotidian are so underpriced when it comes to the list of topics upon which it’s fit to pontificate. We should, I’m convinced, be able to weed our way to salvation. Or at the very least, to self-realisation.
