Gardening as a lifestyle. What does that even mean?

When I began my journey into the soil, I didn’t know I was choosing not just something to do in my free time but I was choosing a way to be. I was choosing a lifestyle.

Gardening for me and my family is everyday, it doesn’t have to be, but I prefer it that way. I prefer the view close to the ground, to fumble my fingers over leaves and flowers, to smell the scent of tulsi every time her pink flowers catch my eye. Gardening for me is a rest, a peace and a way to quiet the constant noise both in and outside of my head.

I realize that for others this may not be the case, it serves a function or even a need. I get that, but for me…for us it’s a lifestyle. The garden is what our day to day is formed around. It takes part in our daily tasks wether watering or pruning or harvesting. It sits with us at the dinner table in the form of herbs just plucked from their mother plant and sprinkled generously across our plates. The garden greets us as we walk into our home from the car as it is purposefully just a step away and rambles over our heads each day as we come and go.

The backyard garden is where we go each morning to feed our rabbit in the form of radish and carrot, basil and mint, hackberry and mulberry. The garden meets our needs too when a delicate matter arises and a sacred space is needed for talking and crying. The garden is so much a part of our daily lives that to separate it from us would be difficult to even imagine. The garden grounds us, reminds us that it like us has seasons, suffers the weather and changing climate and persists on however straggly at times. It gives us hope, healing and revives the heart. The garden is our constant. The garden is an extension of our home. The garden is in so many ways our life.

So Garden Lifestyle can be many things to many people. It will look different in an apartment than in a home. And different in the country vs the city but in all cases, people are living next to and with a “garden” however big and treasuring the presence it brings to their lives in the form of nourishment, inspiration and in our connected existence. A garden lifestyle is really just us being a part of nature, living every day a bit closer to the source and loving living things from microbes to monarda.