Gardening as a Spiritual Path

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Gardening is the New Meditation

by Sandy Swegel

Over the last few months, I’ve recommitted myself to a meditation practice. It’s a simple practice of Centering Prayer, sitting 20 minutes twice a day, although most days I’m lucky to manage one session. The fruits of a meditation practice (like those of a garden) come over time.  With regular practice, one slowly notices one is more calm, more able to handle the daily turmoils of living, more able to see things from a larger perspective.  With persistence and time, the meditator has a chance to become a more loving, compassionate and happier person.

In many ways, I live a split life.  I have a group of friends who meditate and focus on spirituality, and I have a different group of friends who focus on gardening. It is one of my pet theories that Gardening is the New Church.  Many people come together in community to garden, especially to grow food.  Gardeners meet regularly to support one other, they teach their children in the church of nature, they help the poor by giving away extra produce to food banks, and they join together to do gardening service projects in their community or to help older people who can’t garden alone anymore.  It’s a pretty amazing phenomenon.

I invite you to become more aware of gardening as a spiritual path for you.  Our BBB Seed Facebook page statistics give us lots of clues to how important gardening and nature is to you.  The pictures and blog posts you “like” the most are the ones that are the most spiritual or transcendent.  You “like” pictures of dramatic landscapes and pictures of the simple beauty of a single flower or a whimsical thought. You “share” articles about esoteric topics like Forest Bathing.

When I blog I like to give lots of practical advice about how to grow things because I want you to be successful at gardening.  So many people try to garden and give up because they fail in some way…usually because of not knowing what a plant needs.  I’ll keep teaching those things, but this year I want to write more about the spiritual practices of gardening.  I hope this will be a conversation too about how gardening and nature uplift your spirit.

It’s almost sunrise when I’m writing right now, and I’m off to complete one of my favorite simple spiritual practices.  I walk outside to greet the sunrise. I observe the reds and pinks and golds of the morning sky. I breathe in the fresh cold morning air and breathe out any negativity.  I think about three things I’m grateful for.  I compliment the sun on how beautiful he is this morning.  And I send out a blessing over the earth with each day’s new sun.  Amen.

Forest Bathing

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Being in the Present Moment

No, this isn’t a clever way to reduce water usage during drought conditions. “Forest bathing” or as it’s called in Japan shinrin-yoku, has now been clinically proven to reduce stress and improve human health. We gardeners and wildflower lovers have always known this, but the Japanese have perfected the art of shinrin-yoku (There are 48 official “forest therapy” trails in Japan.) And Western Science has documented the effect on humans through clinical research. In its most simple form, forest bathing is just about getting out and simply being in nature…being in the present moment.

An article or book on forest bathing pops up every couple of years…The New York Times wrote in 2010. The current issue Outside magazine has an entire spread: “Take Two Hours of Pine Forest and Call Me in the Morning.”  Outside whimsically describes a forest bathing session: “…You stroll a little, maybe write a haiku, crack open a spicebush twig and inhale its woodsy, sassy scent. People come out of the city and literally shower in the greenery…” Research is documenting that the health effects of forest bathing include reduced blood pressure, reduced cortisol levels, an increase in white blood cells, and an increase in natural killer cells. One study found over a hundred different essential oils in forest air.

Based on ancient Shinto and Buddhist practices, shinrin-yoku recommends a mindful approach to bathing in the forest and focusing on experiencing the forest through all five senses.  If you’re caught up in the busyness of urban life and have to stop a second to try to remember what the five senses are….it’s time to head for the forest!

Related Articles: http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/wellness/Take-Two-Hours-of-Pine-Forest-and-Call-Me-in-the-Morning.html http://psychologyofwellbeing.com/201112/forest-bathing.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/health/06real.html?_r=2&ref=health& http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_bathing http://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-well-being/photos/7-odd-natural-ways-to-boost-your-health/forest-bathing

Best Ways to Learn to be a Better Gardener

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My Favorite Gardening Sources

I was browsing through the Amazon best-selling gardening books, thinking of possible gifts for gardeners. So many of the books are truly beautiful and full of information, but information isn’t as hard to find as it used to be.  A quick Google search can teach you all you really need to know about growing, say, brussels sprouts.  So I asked myself the question, what are the best ways to learn to be a better gardener.

The common denominator of the gardening resources I continue to learn from is that they are based on observation and lots of practice.  The writers or researchers have spent a lifetime observing plants or soil or the gardener and have used careful observation backed with science or practice to come to good recommendations.

Here are my favorite sources that I refer to year after year:

For tending flowers and perennials, the best book is Tracy Di-Sabato-Aust’s Well-Tended Perennial Garden: Planting and Pruning Techniques. Her advice on pruning and grouping plants and deadheading creates long seasons of spectacular color.

For winter gardening, Eliot Coleman is the man. If he can grow fresh vegetables year round in Maine without supplemental power, you can too. His Winter Harvest Handbook explains it in great detail.

For dealing with pests and bugs, an online source is my go-to place. UC-Davis maintains an extraordinary database of “integrated pest management” that has cultural and organic and traditional chemical ways of treating almost every problem you could have. http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/

For planning your vegetable garden, John Jeavons, How to Grow More Vegetables, Eighth Edition: (and Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops) continues to be the best way to design your vegetable garden and decide what and how much to plant to become self-sufficient.

And finally, to prepare your food, I have old favorites and an online favorite.  Rosalind Creasy’s 1982 Cooking From the Garden is a constant source of inspiration.  Her latest book “Rosalind Creasy’s Recipes from the Garden” has excellent recipes for turning your garden produce into culinary delights.

My second favorite inspiration is the New York Times’ many food columnists. Recipes are all conveniently online.

If you prefer to use these sources, you can have the things people most often want from their gardens:  More Color. More Beauty. Healthy Food, and Easy Recipes to turn their produce and fruit into sublimely Delicious Food.

Ignoring what “they” say.

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Keeping An Open Mind

by Sandy Swegel

I visited a garden yesterday tended by my friend Lou.  Lou has gardened for other people for many years and the heavy shade garden I visited has lots of color despite being in shade and the fact that we’ve been in high temperature, drought conditions.

As we walked around and she told me some of the secrets of the garden’s success, I found myself thinking, “But “they” say not to do that.”  Things like “they” say native plants don’t want rich soil and shouldn’t be fertilized like other garden plants.  Hah. Her well-fed natives were twice the size of mine.  Or “they” say dahlias don’t do well in shade and need full sun.  She had twenty magnificent blooming dahlias that begged to differ.  And she used all kinds of plants the opposite of what the labels say:  Euonymous species, sold as shrubs, were tough interesting reliable groundcovers when kept short by pruning.

My favorite gardeners have always been the ones ignoring what “they” say and think about what might actually work.  My first experience was an older gentleman who had grown tomatoes for 70 years by the time I met him.  He had tried all the tomato techniques I ever heard of.  “Epsom salts,” he guffawed…”don’t do a thing except make the tomatoes taste salty.”  “Water has to be consistent.”  He had watered every day with soaker hoses since they had been invented.  So as I watched him fertilize, I expected some down-home advice.  Instead, I watched in horror as he just spooned tablespoons of dry Miracle Grow crystals right next to the tomato stem.  “But, but…” I stammered, “Aren’t you going to burn the plants and kill them?”  Nope….they just got watered in slow-release-like with each soaker hose watering and he had the best tomatoes in town.

That still didn’t match the shock of watching my friend Barbara.  She definitely walks her own path and is agreed by all to be the best gardener we know.  She never fertilized with fertilizers. She composts and mulches and puts goat manure and earthworm compost on everything, but she has never bought a bottle of something and put it on her yard. Geraniums bloomed in containers for fifteen years with only compost and maybe grass clippings in the bottom of the pot for the earthworms to eat. The most startling part of watching her garden was that she never treated pests.  Sawflies came two years in a row and ate every single leaf on her six-foot-tall gooseberries. They looked terrible.  She made sure the plants were watered and had lots of compost, but said the plants needed to figure it out if they wanted to survive. It was up to them to figure out how to defend themselves.  She just made sure the garden environment was good.  To my amazement, the plants survived and put out new leaves, and the third year the beetles didn’t return.  Who knew?

I still do lots of things “they” say because much is based on someone’s research and experience.  But I keep an open mind. Every time somebody gives me a lecture about the right way to garden or what “they” say I should be doing, I ask myself, “Who is this ‘they’?” “And who gave them all the power?”

 

What a Plant Knows

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Get to Know the World of Plants

Back when I was a teenager, summer reading was all about pulp fiction and romantic novels, except for the summer when I read everything Arthur C. Clarke ever published.  Now that I use podcasts for pulp novels and nonfiction, I can spend summer on eccentric or unusual new books.  What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses is my latest extraordinary discovery.

Author Daniel Chamovitz points out that it has been over three decades(!) since Secret Lives of Plants was published and there has been lots of hard scientific research about plants since then.  Chamovitz emphasizes over and over that plants DON’T experience the world as humans do, but they do sense the world in their own ways.

Some tidbits from this provocative book:

Plants are aware of the world around them.

They can “see” in that they differentiate between red, blue, far-red and UV lights (better than we can, incidentally).

They can “smell” in that they are aware of aromas and minute amounts of chemical compounds in the air.

They can “touch” and respond differently to different kinds of touch.

They are aware of the past and can remember past infections and conditions and change their physiology based on those memories.

They can communicate with other plants and warn them of predators.

And my favorite:  plants dance…all plants move in a great spiral when they grow and when they adapt to their environment.Broccoli, Organic Romanesco

This book isn’t a metaphysical exploration of plants. It is a long scientific discussion of specific plant actions and reactions. For people like me who want to know why plants do things…why they thrive and survive sometimes and why they wither and die sometimes, ‘What a Plant Knows’ is a great treasure.

The Midsummer Lull

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Preparing for Late Summer Harvest and Beyond

by Sandy Swegel

I was surfing the garden internet last night at Garden Rant http://gardenrant.com/2012/06/grazing-my-way-through-the-lull.html where blogger Michele Owens is lamenting the midsummer lull in her vegetable garden.  It’s so true, late June is a difficult time in both the vegetable and flower garden.  There was the wild early June flush of color on roses and spring perennials.  Mid-June brought peas and tons of chard and kale and spinach.  But the intense unusual heat of the last couple of weeks made the spinach and arugula bolt and the peas and fava beans quickly went hard in their shells.  Tomatoes are full of flowers and tiny green tomatoes, but there’s not much for eating.  The one exception is zucchini…The zucchini are pumping out a new zucchini or two a day….but it’s hard to find other vegetables for dinner. How can the basil be so small when I started them months ago?

The flower garden is similar. The hot season rudbeckias are finally starting but there isn’t the lushness the garden of a few weeks ago had.  First of July is a great time to notice what’s in bloom in your (or your neighbor’s) vegetable and flower garden and vow to plant that this year or next.  Ideas I’m stealing that look great in this otherwise lulling time:

Leek seed heads.  I let the leeks perennialize and plant themselves each year….so right now the flower heads are tall and a lovely pink, covered with bees.

Monarda.  Drifts of monarda are abloom…and full of bees and butterflies.

Echinacea.  Although some think of echinacea as a full sun xeric plant, it is at its prettiest with some shade and with irrigation. Some of the nicest echinaceas grow at the edge of apple trees where the extra coolness makes them vibrant.

Daylilies.  Get the camera out so you can document the daylilies you really like (in your yard or your neighbor’s) so you can make divisions next Spring.

It’s great anticipating the bounty that’s about to burst in mid-July.  Hard to believe during this lull that we’ll soon be leaving tomatoes on the vine because there are too many to eat.

Playing with Flowers

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Bring Them Inside for a Visit

by Sandy Swegel

Even though I don’t have a cutting garden, I love to bring flowers into the house, especially delicate fragile ones that can disappear in a formal arrangement.  This morning on a walk through an abandoned lot, I saw some pretty blue flax.  I snipped them and a few lacy poppies that will only last the day, accompanied by a beautiful yellow salsify weed flower.  In a tall skinny vase that holds the weak stems up, this looks sweet and restful in the window over my kitchen sink and reminds me all day of the peace of the early morning walk.

It’s peony season here, and I adore a peony floating in some water.  I took one somewhat spent peony and floated it in an old circa 1960s blue glass ashtray.  I set it on the corner of my desk, to distract me from too much internet browsing.

Floating flowers is a favorite activity of mine and the many inexpensive hor d’ oeuvres serving plates Crate and Barrel sells.  Tiny shrub roses float along the curving ridges of the platter and make a beautiful dinner table centerpiece.  Sometimes I put in a floating candle or two amid the blossoms.

If all the rose blossoms are spent, I can do as a neighbor does: gather them up and put them in water bowls each day on both sides of the steps up her entryway. It gives a calm Zen-like presence to her door and brings a smile to the guests and the postman.

Finally, I return to my Southern roots where we always put flowers out in the “guest” bathroom or a tiny vase in the guest bedroom if someone was coming to visit.  Tall shot glasses sturdily hold a tiny rose bouquet.  These little delicacies of nature remind our guests how special we think they are.

Nature puts such beauty in our path in Summer.  How can we resist playing with all those flowers and bringing them indoors to visit with us?

4 Things to Learn from Botanic Gardens

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Waterwise strip of plantings at the Denver Botanic Gardens.

Finding Inspiration

by Sandy Swegel

I’ve been going to our local (and extraordinary) botanic gardens, The Denver Botanic Gardens, DBG, every two weeks this year.  Every year I intend to go but get busy and only get there once or so.  But I bought a family membership that included six tickets per visit….so now I’m getting to see the gardens and making new friends every time because I invite all kinds of people so I don’t “waste” the tickets.  Even though I’m a professional gardener and am in other people’s landscapes all the time, I am learning so much. I encourage you to go with observant eyes and watch how public gardens are designed and managed. (On the weeks I don’t go to the DBG, I take a hike in the nearby foothills to see how Mother Nature designs and manages gardens. She’s a bit messier.)

Some of the things I’ve learned this last week:

Plants want to Mingle.  Although DBG tags its plants so we know what is what, they aren’t really a single specimen sitting alone…all the plants grow next to one another and through each others’ branches and leaves.  A tall flower that falls doesn’t need to be staked right away…it starts to grow up toward the light from its down position and still looks great growing out of the groundcover.  Trees and giant viburnums are all artfully pruned so they send long arms through each other, never having to stand alone.  Old trees keep their place, but new ones of a different variety are planted nearby. The old one’s broken trunk and nasty gashes are covered and the new tree doesn’t look so scraggly.

The same plant can look so different in another setting.  The DBG has a policy of gentle tolerance toward reseeding plants.  As long as they look good and aren’t choking out other plants, the repetition of salvia or verbena from one display garden to another gives a feeling of unity to the entire area.

Giant Buddleia bush at the Denver Botanic Gardens.

Photo by Sandy Swegel

Giant plants look great at the periphery.  Giant shrub viburnums or 15-foot tall lilacs or this massive Buddleja alternifolia ‘Argentea’ planted along the far back of a garden area are stately and give a sense of structure and enclosure to a garden. Some of the nearby trees seem small in comparison.  But a garden full of small plants can look like just a lot of little things that are hard to distinguish from one another.

Use more Art and Light and Water.  Sculptural pieces of art, strategically placed solar lights, and even very small water features turn a garden from beautiful into delightful!  As dusk descends on the Denver Botanic Gardens, strands of lights and solitary spotlights come on turning what was a lovely day into a magical evening.

Tour your local Botanic Garden soon.  You’ll find like I did, the inspiration for dozens of ways to do things differently in your garden.

http://www.botanicgardens.org/

Photo credits: Sandy Swegel

The Joy of the Garden Routine

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Enjoy These Morning Moments

by Sandy Swegel

Rifling through the garden in the early sunrise hour this morning, I paused to look up at the morning sky that looked just like the ones in Renaissance paintings.  Following the beauty to the earth, I saw for the first time this year my garden in full growth and fertility.  I got a glimpse not just of weeds and tiny seedlings but of orach in its vibrant purple color and arugula in bloom.  Peas and favas are reaching for the sky and putting out delicate blooms.  Re-seeded larkspur will probably open in just a few hours.  I did pull a few weeds and start some more chard seeds on a blank patch.  But I got bundles of fresh greens for my morning juice, leeks to put in the crockpot for dinner, and magnificent lettuce for an evening salad.  The garden today has begun to return much more than I have put into it.  Tomatoes are still in walls of water and many plants are tiny, but the lovely routine of the season has started.

From now, I’ll settle into my 15 minute morning garden routine, slightly amended with today’s revelation.

Look up at the big sky. Look at the vitality of life between the sky and the earth.
Pull the big weeds.
Harvest the food for the day.
Fill the empty spots with new seeds or plants.
Water what is dry.
Look once more in gratitude and wonder at the big sky.

There will be times I spend more time in the garden because it’s fun or an ambitious project is taking hold.  And there may be times when I’m not keeping up with the pests or weeds that sneak in and there will be some remedial work.  But for the most part, if I am consistent in my 15-minute daily routine, my time in the garden will never be a chore but will be invigorating and full of nourishment and inspiration for the day.

Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart?

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Getting Garden Smart

by Sandy Swegel

One thing is certain.  The older you get, the more you understand the depth of this saying.  Too soon old, too late smart? Most of us finally get smarter –in gardening, in life, in work, and in love—but some of us are slow or stubborn learners and by the time we finally “get” something and understand with clarity, we’re already getting a bit crickety and reaching a “mature” age.  But it doesn’t have to be this way with gardening.  Gardeners are natural teachers and mentors and are generous to share the wisdom of their hard-learned lessons.

And sometimes you find someone who is a learner and collector of wisdom and who has taken the time to reflect on that wisdom and share it.  Jane Shellenberger, a friend of BBB Seed, is a gardener who does all of those things.  She has created and edited Colorado Gardener, a free print publication, that six times a year presents articles from the leading gardening minds in the greater Denver area.  Over the years she has been an avid learner from our scientists, nursery owners, the people who invented the word xeriscape, and our home gardeners. In her spare time, she writes about gardening for the Christian Science Monitor. (links at http://www.coloradogardener.com/)

So you could spend whole days on her free website and get a lot “smarter” about gardening without getting too old, or you could read the book she has just published: Organic Gardener’s Companion: Growing Vegetables in the West.  I’ve spent the last week with this book and I’m surprised how many new things I’ve learned….and I’m a gardening research junkie who scours the internet and grills friends and strangers about gardening practices.  Jane has gathered the gardening wisdom of her lifetime and the life-long wisdom of stellar home and professional gardeners, scientists and entrepreneurs, and written a book that will teach you advanced gardening techniques but is still beautiful to read and easy to understand.  Sort of Acres Magazine meets Martha Stewart Gardening.

We all yearn to pass on the wisdom of our lives. We want the young not to struggle as we did to learn life-lessons.  We wish we knew then what we know now.  Jane has gathered many lifetimes of garden smarts (and she’s not even close to old) and written a good and useful book.  In a world filled with garden books with the same old beginner’s knowledge rehashed, this one stands out and will help make you garden-smart.