Gardening - lots of rotten tomatoes

What images does the word ‘gardening’ evoke for you? It’s a catch-all for tending a few indoor plants to running a large productive community patch. 

For many, gardening is strongly associated with all sorts of positive images and benefits. Sure, not everyone is into gardening.¹ But for those who are, it is a completely GOOD THING. 

Gardening is enjoyable, fun, healthy, and good for mental wellbeing for all ages, according to - well - everyone. 

A google search of 'gardening' will give you articles like Gardening makes you happier, Physical and mental benefits of gardening, A fun hobby that makes you healthier, Gardening improves emotional wellbeing, and more! 

When I searched 'gardening + emotions', I found a blog article that lists satisfaction, peace, joy, patience, adventure as the five emotions² that gardening brings out in you.   

But that's not my experience at all. I often find gardening to be anything but enjoyable. I often feel anxious, frustrated, incompetent, burdened and guilty. Am I doing something wrong? Or have we just been sold half the story?

Me and my garden

I have a large productive garden growing food, flowers and some plants for wildlife. I sometimes share excess produce and plants with friends and neighbours. On my social media, I post lots of photos of flowers, tiny just germinated plants, and lush leaf patterns. So, it's no surprise that most people assume that I love gardening. 

But… it's a much more ambivalent relationship.

Maybe I love it. I have gardened for over 30 years in various types of gardens, in each new location and stage of life. A tropical rainforest, a wildlife sanctuary, a fruit grove, and three years ago I started a productive patch. While I’m engrossed with a task, I love being amongst the dirt.

But maybe I hate it. Many mornings, I can't make myself go outside to the overwhelming pile of work that is my garden. I just don't want to. Many afternoons, I cajole myself with a glass of wine as a reward once I finish my sweaty afternoon of planting and feeding and weeding and pruning and cleaning up. 

And all too often, when I think I'm finished for the day and ready for the wine, I notice those three plants urgently needing to be put in the ground before they die, and in the process of doing that I see grasshoppers munching on my spinach, and while getting them off, I notice the dreaded nutgrass is smothering the boc choi, and while making space for some strangled seedlings, I trip over the tools I inadvertently left there that have now gone rusty, and while giving them a quick sand and some oil, I discover that something has leaked in my cupboard of fertilisers and oils which will be a horrible job to clean up. Enough!!! 

So, then I go and get the wine, feeling deeply irritated and resentful toward my garden.

I sometimes wonder: do I actually like gardening, or do I just like the idea and popular images of gardening? When I explore the various feeling that surface while gardening, I have my doubts… 

It's time for a deep dive into what the word gardening evokes for me. 

Gardening exuberance and passion 

It seems to me that many people I see on gardening programs are a tad over the top about it. Perhaps that’s because only the exuberant gardeners do public presentations. But maybe they have turned a genuine and enduring passion into a wage earner as a blogger or TV presenter. 

But it appears to me that many backyard gardeners are also upbeat, enthusiastic and passionate about their gardens. Flower shows like Toowoomba's Carnival of Flowers or Ballarat's Begonia Festival also show off private gardens, the labour of love of many, many people. They must love it or how would the garden get to look like that? In conversation, they enthuse about all the effort and all the devotion they have lavished on their gardens.

Then again, I have a garden that others often admire. It's not due to passionate enthusiasm though. It's more a blend of what might be called ‘negative’ emotions. 

Compulsion and responsibility

First, I feel compelled when I see or hear about a new plant… I want to try, get that. For example, just last week, I bought 14 packets of seeds, a new succulent, a specialist local orchid, and a rare tropical plant for my already over-full garden. 

Oh dear, I've just bought my own future frustrations. 

Then, I feel compelled to make time to plant them out quickly, otherwise they will die, and I will have wasted my money. Once I have the plants in the garden, I experience a strong sense of responsibility. I put these living things here, they are dependent on me to tend them and to meet their needs. 

But wait! What are their needs?!?

Ignorance and frustration

A big part of gardening for me is the discomfort of facing my ignorance on a daily basis.

Everything I now know how to do successfully in the garden, I've learned by getting it wrong at least once, usually twice. This still happens even after many years.

Gardening skills are something you acquire over a considerable time. All sorts of things trip up the novice productive gardener - poor soil, pests galore, mould and rust and blights, gluts of one vegetable (when they are cheap in the shops anyway), droopy flowers, fertiliser ratios, rotting buds, too much sun/too much shade, planting too close together, windy weather, water restrictions, and more. Experiencing all these problems and then learning to manage them provides many valuable and often unpleasant lessons for the gardener. 

So, gardening is something you learn mainly by getting it wrong. I do not enjoy that at all. There's no other area of my life where I work like that. And I feel bad about wasting all that money, water and effort. Sometimes, after a crop of capsicums rots on the stems due to some nutritional deficiency, I can calculate that my crop of two capsicums cost about $48 each based on all the inputs (not counting my time)!!

As I approach any new activity in the garden, I hesitate, procrastinate, delay and defer. That's because I know I WILL experience failure and WILL have to re-do the whole thing (at least twice). I just know it. There is so much to know, and written instructions are only a tiny part of working it out, most of it is observation and trial and error. Lots of error. And lots of failure!! Who enjoys that??

So, for me, gardening evokes not so much the fear of failure, as the anticipation of failure, and the awful frustration of that process. Some days I just don’t feel strong enough. 

Guilt and overwhelm

For sure, I do sometimes feel satisfied when I come in from the garden with a basketful of beans or eggplants. 

But more often, I feel guilt, burden and overwhelm.

All too often, it seems, I come outside to find insects have completely decimated a crop, seemingly overnight. Half the beans are destroyed. Then I look more closely and notice the raised spots on the underside of each bean leaf. It’s not just the insects, the plant is not well. What disease/pest/nutritional deficiency/ rust/illness/situational issue is that? (Rising sense of ignorance and frustration.)

This scenario takes me very quickly to guilt. I wonder what I have done wrong - because undoubtedly, it's my fault. Who else could it be? Which aspect of the complex system of ecology have I neglected, not understood, not paid enough attention, not given enough care? I feel guilt for not knowing how to look after something I feel responsible for. 

Every new plant problem in my garden feels like negligence, getting it wrong feels like incompetence, and watching plants sicken or die feels like involuntary manslaughter. Trial and error may be the only way to learn to garden, but I feel like I'm the one on trial, and I find myself guilty. 

Obviously, the solution must be to work harder.

Unrelenting and hard physical work 

When you decide to grow a productive garden, it's not at all like on TV. You don't rake the soil for 5 minutes, sprinkle some always-available compost and fertiliser around, plant your handily ready seedlings, water in, check back for the exciting growth, and then in a few months, eat the yummy produce.  

There's a world of difference between the peaceful and attractive image of a lush and productive patch and the reality of the relentless hard slog of work.³ The requirement of food production (and a beautiful flower bed or similar) is an enormous amount of work, the need for daily vigilance, and the incompatibility with flexible living and travel.

Sometimes I just want to rest more. Sometimes I want to do other things instead. Sometimes I want to go away for a week without coming back to plant disasters. Sometimes my back hurts.

Do any of those enthusiastic⁴ TV and blogging gardeners ever stand on their back landing with their morning cuppa when the cameras have gone, and say 'Stuff it, I just don't want to do it today? It's just too much!!’

I know I do. And I would say it to a camera too, lol!

I’m sorry lovely Hannah⁵ but I don’t find it so fun, fun, fun! 

Existential dread

Let's back up a bit: why do I feel compulsive about getting plants and gardening in the first place? What's behind that? I do like the idea of fresh produce grown by me, but I know I don't really enjoy much of the process of it.

I've gardened for many decades, for various reasons. But, like many, I ramped up my gardening during covid lockdowns. I shifted from native Australian plants to food production (but kept in some flowers). Like many, I was motivated not by extra time and interest, but by the shortages of various foodstuffs (and toilet paper) that seemed like an omen of a dystopian future where climate change destroys large scale food production. 

I'm wondering if my gardening compulsion comes from existential dread, from fear. Perhaps, it's not that I spend time food gardening because I like doing it, but because I have a dread about the future. A vague dystopian future most probably a bit beyond my own lifetime.

Fear-based gardening? Could it be that fear of future food scarcity is infiltrating my current garden efforts and generating so much distress? In this mind space, my frequent failures in the garden play out as dramas that stoke that fear. The rotten capsicums provide evidence that we will all starve! Each garden 'disaster' raises the spectre of this terrifying possibility at a subconscious level and various distressing emotions, while it may appear to others that I am happily digging in my backyard

You always take the weather with you, especially in the garden

That all sounds pretty negative, hey? This exploration has revealed to me that my gardening tendencies may well be rooted in some vague existential dread that evokes feelings of compulsion, responsibility, ignorance, frustration, guilt, being overwhelmed and burdened. 

It tells me a lot about me. I don't like confronting my own ignorance; I don't like having a sense of too much to do; I don't like feeling responsible for things I don't know how to care for. My approach to gardening fits my lifelong pattern of taking on too much, always making projects and activities bigger than I can manage, and then resenting them!

And I don't think it's just me. When I've talked to a few people about my ideas for this post, they've said they were pleased to hear someone talking about that. 

But I think it also says a lot about gardening too. And more specifically, about how gardening is ‘sold’ to us.

I’m finding the super-keen and exuberant TV gardeners more and more annoying. I want them to be more realistic. I want them to share the full picture of gardening. 

Sure talk about the positives; but also talk about how you may feel grief and loss and guilt and overwhelming burden. These are healthy things for a person to experience, but not if they are unacknowledged, not if they are considered unacceptable. I might have my own variety of hang-ups, but I think these feeling are a normal and common part of gardening for most people, especially the beginning gardener.

Warm memories and beauty

So, what keeps me out there? Of course, there are some really lovely emotional positives in the garden, but not so much from producing food.

Sometimes the garden evokes memories of my grandmothers' gardens, other gardens of my life, and memories of my parents' favourite plants like hydrangeas. Then I can experience warmth and nostalgia.  

And when I least expect it, I can be uplifted by beauty, awed by insects and other critters, beguiled and amazed by the incredible complexity of each plant and its myriad relationships and interconnections.

Gardening gives me the opportunity to lose myself while being enthralled by growing things and complex systems. 

Mindfulness for the over-doer? 

Speaking of losing myself, I think that the various repetitive and mindless gardening tasks can be a form of meditative practice that suits me. Many gardening tasks are repetitive and simple, so they provide the opportunity to zone out and think about other things or to zone in and focus on the immediate here and now. 

Pruning, weeding, watering, raking, etc., allow a type of absorption and meditation for the mind that struggles to be still or the person who struggles with the need to be constantly productively occupied. So I can be satisfied and ‘stilled’ through the many gardening activities. 

It's far from all negative.

Revisiting that existential dread 

The many, many failures in the garden over the last few years have taught me a lot, not just about gardening. 

A key lesson is that there is no point struggling against the prevailing conditions of shade, water and heat, or forcing beloved childhood flowers that don't grow in your climate, etc. For me, it's been an important part of the process of accepting 'what is', rather than hoping somehow things will be different.

However, most importantly, gardening is a salutary lesson in how connected we are to complex systems we don't fully understand. Gardening provides endless and unavoidable reminders that we are completely dependent on these systems. It challenges our human arrogance about what we section off and call ‘nature’ as though we were separate from it. It pushes back at the hubris and contempt in the way we tend to treat the natural world as something to be used and used up.

It provides a different picture of existence, full of uncertainty, that we need to learn to live with.

High stakes gardening  

So, I continue to garden, and I do produce some food now, a bit more reliably. It is satisfying to use my own sweet potatoes, spring onions, beans, pumpkins and make a tasty stew. When things are going okay in the garden, my existential dread is quietened.

But still, some plants grow, some sicken, other plants die at 2cm high. Regular disasters continue: just this afternoon I dug up sweet potatoes full of weevils, more yuk than you want to know about.⁶ I don’t enjoy that, but I have learned to recognise and accept the experience of some of the more uncomfortable emotions. 

Now I'm more in touch with these emotions as they arise and what they are telling me. 

These emotions are a part of gardening. So, I have to disagree strongly with the types of articles about gardening that I mentioned in the opening. 

Gardening is not much fun, although it can be satisfying. It's not about self-sufficiency, but about realising interconnections and dependency. It is good for your mental well-being if you are willing to accept the full experience, but not necessarily your happiness. It's not about peace; it is often deeply unsettling and frustrating. It's less about patience and adventure, and more about accepting your lack of control over how things pan out.

There is so much to learn in order to produce food in your own garden, mainly through the unpleasant processes of getting it wrong and wasting all your effort. Gardening includes experiencing loss and even grief, facing uncertainty on a daily basis, and acknowledging our human frailty and dependence on natural systems that most of us hardly understand. 

For me, gardening is a high stakes human investment. 

But an investment worth making. 

Footnotes

1. Our culture promotes images of gardening for old people, fussy people, so some young people reject gardening for that reason. And not everyone who wants to can have a garden, of course!
2. Okay, the word-purist in me has to comment they are not all actually 'emotions' in the true sense, but the point is they are things we consider positive. 
3. The only TV garden person I've heard acknowledge the workload was Jerry Coleby-Williams who said 3 meals a day might be too much work, but 2 meals a day might be doable. I can't imagine doing enough work to make 1 meal reliably every day!
4. Or does their passion for the garden lure them forward for another day of satisfying labour. Their endless enthusiasm makes me wonder if I actually like gardening. 
5. Hannah from Gardening Australia: her ideas and suggestions are really practical; I love her segments, but I so want to know if she ever has a bad day in the garden!
6. Sweet potato weevils burrow through the tuber eating as they go and filling the burrow with their excrement. And this is my fault too, because I should have been using crop rotation!

Images

• Child in the garden: https://get.pxhere.com/photo/farm-lawn-meadow-flower-boy-kid-child-agriculture-garden-yard-watering-gardener-917506.jpg [Free use photos from Pxhere]
• Two spades: https://get.pxhere.com/photo/work-lawn-flower-tool-green-backyard-soil-botany-garden-earth-gardening-spade-woodland-blade-yard-dig-nursery-gardener-landscape-gardener-ground-breaking-ceremony-1103633.jpg [Free use photos from Pxhere]
• Dahlia stakes by Brian Pettinger: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hortoris/5837149122/ [CC BY-SA-NC]
• Rotten capsicum plant by the author
• Diseased bean plant by the author
• Hannah having fun on her Good Life Permaculture FB page
• Dead plant by the author
• Insect damaged orchid by the author 
• Nostalgic hydrangea: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/90000/velka/hydrangee-rose-1.jpg [Public domain]
• Garden worker: https://pixnio.com/media/gardener-gardening-plant-material-plantation-planter [Free use photos from Pixnio]
• Pointy garden stakes (get it??!) from NSW Archives Outside https://archivesoutside.records.nsw.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Wooden-Stakes.jpg [CC BY-SA-NC]