Reasons to garden
‘If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.’
— Cicero
It’s hard to know where to begin when one wants to write about gardening. As an amateur backyard gardener, it seems harder still. I’m aware that all my observations come from the humble place of a home garden, and any insights I draw only show how much I still have to learn. But I also believe in the value of fresh perspectives and documenting the journey, so I’ll make the attempt anyway.
Fundamentals first
Geographical location and climate shape every garden to a large extent. Site comes next, with access to light and water being of paramount concern. After choosing a site, soil amendments, planting choices, and survival strategies all come into play. Here, in the flat coastal tropics with warm winters, stormy monsoons and scorchingly humid summers it’s a challenge to start gardens from scratch, but once established, they thrive.
Why garden?
Gardens need a level of regular attention and industry that seems ridiculous if all the returns of such an undertaking aren’t factored in. The most important question to ask before rushing into the hows of gardening, is why do it at all? Unless you have a largish piece of land, a garden might not make a big dent in your grocery bills. So leaving aside the obvious benefit of producing food, there are still many excellent reasons to garden.
One, never run out of things to learn
A garden, even a small one, is an exacting but effective teacher. A primal and perennial source of knowledge, it provides an endless supply of epiphanies into how life operates. For instance, garden waste turning into compost exposes the fungal nutrient recycling networks of the ‘wood wide web’, which in turn feeds plants directly and influences higher order food chains that protect and pollinate.
As a consequence of this dynamism and complexity, gardens also strip away that nemesis of learning: the illusion of absolute control. There is a sense of freedom in coming to expect uncertainty with dispassionate deference to a world in flux. You realise you are more caretaker than master.
Two, revel in the intangibles
Apart from the literal reaping of the fruits of labour and the more metaphorical eating of the fruit of knowledge, subtler rewards accrue to those who pursue gardening in earnest. It’s hard to describe how right gardening feels unless you experience it firsthand. Perhaps because, as Carl Sagan says, ‘down deep, at the molecular heart of life we’re essentially identical to trees’. Gardens resonate with us in ways for which there is no language and galvanised by these reverberations, we spend precious energy in service to a single, delightful purpose: the stewardship of a patch of life.
Three, engage in an original creative act
There is a wholesome satisfaction in knowing that your garden exists because of you and the choices you make. The simple joy of working with your hands and your mind in a garden is unparalleled, leading Francis Bacon to declare it ‘the purest of human pleasures’. There is no one reason to take up gardening. But if you do, your reward is the nourishment of a boundless biological continuum that includes you, and the enjoyment of a rich tapestry of earthly delights spun from the universe itself.
Beloved horticulturist and writer, Monty Don, sums it up in simple words: ‘I have had a very fortunate life. I have made gardens with someone that I love and this has brought me great happiness. You need luck to be happy. But make a garden and you increase your chances.’