Gardening calms, gives creative outlet

For me, gardening is recreation in the most literal sense, the “re-creation” of mind, body and spirit that comes from leaving day-to-day life for an interlude of more novel and refreshing experiences.

I discovered the benefits of gardening when at 34 I was editing college textbooks in San Francisco and took on way too much freelance work. After months of extremely heavy workloads and unrelenting deadline pressures, I also found myself editing a string of textbooks that were so poorly written and filled with fluff that they should never have been printed, much less forced upon college students.

The latter was especially demoralizing and, combined with overwork and fatigue, pushed me to a decision: “I can’t do this anymore,” I said. “I have to find another way to earn a living.”

But what?

It took a few days for the answer to come, but it came, and it came in three words: “Gardening and landscaping.”

It made no sense. All I knew about gardening at the time was how to mow, weed and edge lawns, which I’d done to earn the occasional buck as a teenager. Otherwise, I barely knew a flower from an umbrella. Nonetheless, I proceeded to read every book on gardening I could find and talk to as many nursery people and landscapers as possible. I also took on small jobs with landscapers. Then I bought some tools and contracted a few small gardening jobs of my own.

Before long, the bigger jobs came, and the referrals, and in a few months I was actually making a living gardening and landscaping. It wasn’t a great living, but it was enough to get by, and it got better.

What I discovered almost immediately about gardening was that it made me sane. Certainly the fresh air and exercise beat spending days in a chair pushing a red pen. But there was much more. Gardening and landscaping, I found, changed my sense of time. They brought me totally into the present, a place largely free of the internal monologue of fears, confusions, expectations and frustrations that can so sap our energies and drive us more than a little batty.

Gardening was, in a word, calming. It was also a terrific creative outlet because in a very real sense it blended both painting and sculpture, requiring work with light, color and texture, and all in three dimensions. And of course it provided the deep satisfaction that comes with being able to actually see and touch the results of one’s labors.

The story isn’t really about me, of course. I’m not unique in any way. Gardening does the same things for everyone.

If we had the space, we could talk about some scientific measures of the physical and mental benefits of gardening; for example, Virginia Tech horticulturist Diane Relf’s findings that trimming trees and shrubs expends as much energy as walking at a moderate pace, raking is energetically equivalent to a leisurely bike ride or water aerobics, and mowing the lawn with a push mower or tilling garden soil is equal to swimming laps. There are a few such studies.

For now, though, let’s just say that gardening provides:

• a wonderful way to free the mind and spirit;

• fresh air, fresh air, and more fresh air;

• exercise, including stretching, reaching, bending, and even, if desired, strength- and muscle-building lifting, hoeing and digging;

• a healthy vacation from the brain-scrambling world of TV, computers, cell phones, videogames, MP3 players;

• the best way to enter nature’s calmer space and pace and rhythm of life;

• fulfillment of the instinct to nurture;

• instant community with others who garden; and

• the wonderful lesson that life really isn’t all about instant gratification, but provides its deepest satisfactions with efforts realized over time.

There is, of course, the spiritual aspect of gardening, the intimate moment with the power of nature and the universe, however one chooses to conceptualize it. Make no mistake. It’s there. Right there in the garden.

Well, we’re running out of space here, and besides, I have some weeds to pull.

Let’s leave with a quote from the late actress Helen Hayes, one especially apropos for those of us in the Ozarks, given our recent history: “All through the long winter, I dream of my garden. On the first day of spring, I dig my fingers deep into the soft earth. I can feel its energy, and my spirits soar.”

Frank Shipe is a freelance writer and editor who operates a free community gardening Web site at www.ozarksgardens.com.[[In-content Ad]]