The Spirit of Gardening

By Anna Soref

Spring in Colorado. The ground remains stubbornly frozen, the trees still wait for their baby green buds, but Jill Reisdorf passes the time gardening—mentally gardening that is. She simply can’t wait to spend warm days with her hands deep in the earth of her front yard, planting seeds that will grow into perennial flowers and herbs that spring back miraculously to life after dormant winters. Ask Reisdorf why she gardens, and she smiles. “It’s like parenting; I have pride in something alive that I have creatively nurtured—and the entire process is magical, pleasurable.”

For many people, tending the garden has very little to do with impressing the neighbors. Rather, gardening stems from a primal desire, something they just “need to do.” For others, it provides a way to reconnect with nature and take a break from the computer screen. With research demonstrating that simply looking at a garden lowers blood pressure and stimulates relaxation, developing a green thumb might be a wise intention for everyone.

Digging In
Gardening plugs us into the essence of life and unplugs us from our technological world, says Peg Streep, author of Spiritual Gardening: Creating Sacred Space Outdoors (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2003). “Gardening is one of the few activities that engages all five senses intensely, even simultaneously—you become alert to what you see, feel, hear, smell, and even taste,” Streep says. “There’s a degree of physical connection there that engages you on every level. When you are on your knees, digging in the earth, that is really all that you are doing.”

Tending plants helps us glimpse the birth-growth-death cycle of life, something our culture has become grossly detached from, according to Streep. “A seed is really the embodiment of the life force. You put it in the ground, you watch it grow, you tend the plants, and then it dies off—it’s a lesson in nurturing and mortality.”

In engaging directly with the life cycle, you also realize the fragility of the ecosystem, which serves to connect you with larger environmental issues, says Maureen “Mo” Gilmer, author of more than 15 books on gardening and host and project designer for the DIY Network television series Weekend Gardening. “It makes people realize how delicate nature is and teaches us that there is order in nature. Through growing your first tomato or flower, you learn that everything interrelates so you can’t do one thing over here and have it not impact something over there. If you can see it in this little tiny microcosm in your backyard, you learn how profoundly your decisions can affect things on a big scale.”

And while we can’t help but be proud of that first tomato, gardening also teaches humility. “No matter how good a gardener you are, you cannot control what will ultimately happen in the garden,” Streep says. She recalls her first garden in Vermont, which she so diligently tended, only to have it become a woodchuck’s salad bar. “Again, the forces of nature play upon us; we cannot control rain or drought.”

Tending plants not only allows them to grow, but grows the gardener’s love as well, says Judith Handelsman, author of Growing Myself: A Spiritual Journey Through Gardening (Plume Paperback, 1997). “You hear these stories about how gardening changes people’s lives, how it eases heartache or turns a nasty, grumpy man sweet. It softens your heart to see stuff grow—anything that needs your attention to live grows your love,” she says. “It’s the most basic relationship that a human being can have.”

Roger Ulrich, PhD, a professor in both the Department of Architecture and the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M University, has spent most of his career researching the relationship between humans and nature, and he’s found that just the mere act of looking at plants has measurable effects on our bodies. “It’s not just psychological or emotional, it’s physiological as well; our blood pressure goes down and muscle tension relaxes,” he says. His research suggests that patients in hospital rooms looking out onto nature versus a parking lot or other man-made structure will recover more quickly.

Our Green Roots
Humans have been enjoying gardens and gardening recreationally since, well, forever. “Consider the Garden of Eden,” says Streep. “In every religion, the notion of paradise as a garden is present; that which is alive and growing is emblematic of the life force and, therefore, of the deities.”

Our affinity for gardening might also be rooted in our ancestral relationship with it. “Gardening is something that should make us feel good, it’s something that we should be drawn to because it was conducive to our well-being and survival throughout evolution,” Ulrich says. “If people were interested in plants and cultivated them, what could be more advantageous in terms of advancing survival chances? We tend to be interested in spotting blooms and flowers. Why? From an evolutionary standpoint, blooms signaled much greater likelihood of the presence of something that would be edible in time.”
The late horticulturist Charles A. Lewis also believed that humans were hard-wired to garden. In his book Green Nature, Human Nature: The Meaning of Plants in Our Lives (University of Illinois Press, 1996), he writes, “Chlorophyll is our continuing connection with life that comes from the sun. Plants are telling us the story of the universe of which we are a part.”

While tending to her garden’s endless weeds this summer, contributing editor Anna Soref will be reminding herself of the spiritual benefits of gardening.

Grow a Garden Sanctuary
Whether you garden or not, an outdoor sanctuary offers a place you can go for prayer, meditation, and contemplation. “An outdoor sanctuary speaks to our primal nature in a way that indoor human and technologically created spaces don’t,” says Maureen Gilmer, host of the TV series Weekend Gardening. “The Judeo-Christian god didn’t choose a temple or building for the first couple to live in, he chose a garden, indicating that spiritually at least, it’s the most human-compatible environment for our souls.”

To create a sacred space, focus on comfort, not size. “You can have the most amazing sanctuary, but if it’s not comfortable, you won’t use it,” Gilmer says. She suggests considering these four elements when creating your own garden sanctuary:

• Separation. Create an enclosure. You don’t want the senses to travel very far—to achieve a state of peace or contemplation, it’s better to minimize visual distractions. Use hedges, screens, and fences to create a space; plants and clinging vines can cover ugly walls. Cover ambient noise with a water feature. Consider building protection from wind, sun, and rain
• Comfort. For seating, consider mesh because it’s lightweight, comfortable, and portable. Avoid metal seating, which is hot in the summer and cold in the winter.
• Image. Consider an altar. For people whose spiritual path contains iconography, such as Buddhists, an altar offers a place of concentrated spiritual focus. Include statuary. Often altars highlight a statue such as St. Francis of Assisi or a goddess. Choose an image that evokes a powerful response in you.
• Plants. When choosing plants, pay attention to their mature size. If they grow too big, they’ll crowd you out. Consider dwarf and small-scale plants and flowers, because at close range you will appreciate every little detail. Include several plants connected to your spiritual path—Christians might want to include lilies, while those with a more Buddhist bent might choose bamboo or a bonsai.