Tending the Garden, Tending the Soul

A personal reflection on how gardening nurtures mindfulness and gratitude

This is a heartfelt embrace for all the nature enthusiasts who revel in the beauty of a little chaos! Over the past few years, I’ve poured my heart into tending the garden every weekend. What began as a cherished refuge—my oasis of “me time” amidst the whirlwind of motherhood—quickly evolved into something much more profound. As a new mom navigating the demands of diapers during the week, I craved a deeper connection with the world around me. With each passing moment, I found myself captivated by the intricate dance of growth and change in nature. I would witness my children blossoming and evolving, and the garden transformed into my sacred sanctuary, a tranquil haven where I found joy in the ever-unfolding beauty that greeted me each week.

The Garden as a Mirror

Depending on the time of day or the time of year that I go to the garden, there is always a new sensory experience to feel. I have learned that planning ahead of the seasons and observing the order of the bloom schedule helped me to get ahead of the work in the garden. I learned that certain plants are more sensitive than others and some need very special care. Roses, specifically, are so spiritual and beautiful, and love to have a clean ground and neatly pruned stems in early springtime. Other flowers, such as daylilies, come up, bloom, may enjoy some deadheading and fertilizer, then pass on, and can be trimmed to the ground just to come back next year out of seemingly nothing because their bulbs live underground during winter while the greens die back. The bugs are important characters to include because they feed, pollinate, as well as deplete the health of the plants, so it’s a struggle to decide how to treat them because they are very important to the ecosystem.

I love how the garden is a way of reflecting back the changes in the seasons and how our behavior can reflect with those cycles. For example, late fall and winter slow down and get darker with shorter days, so it’s a good time to stay inside and rest, as the plants go underground and rest. Spring is a time of birth, and starting anew as fresh plants begin to bud through the snow and leaves. This garden has a wooded surround, so there are always lots and lots of leaves to clean up in the fall and spring.

In my first year, I made the mistake of letting the leaves settle and decompose in the beds with the intention to organically nitrogenate the soil, but what I ended up with is a bug egg-infested, mildewy, disease-ridden pile of soil. So the second year, I made sure to KEEP THE GARDEN CLEAN. Sounds like an oxymoron, right? It’s dirt. But yeah, microbes can cause infections and diseases in plants. Plants can spread diseases so easily through mixing leaves, even through water runoff, and dirty clippers. All things I didn’t realize until I was working on the Secret Garden. Before that, I just saw the beautiful flowers and interesting insects.

Lessons from the Soil

Being in the garden, I imagine to feel like a magical woodland fairy or nymph frolicking in the green leaves with the butterflies, when outwardly I am more like a sweaty, dehydrated, human covered in dirt and bugs. But each week when I step back into the garden, I say hi to all of the plants and step back into fairy-mode in my mind, which negates all of the real grit that is actually happening. I like to check in with all of the plants each week. Sometimes, if I miss only 1 weekend due to rain, I will miss a whole set of blooms like the peonies, or iris. Some flowers will bloom all summer long, but the Spring perennials typically only bloom once each year.

I had a moment last spring when I was clearing our vines. There was a large tree in the garden Parterre where English Ivy and other vines were starting to overtake it so I wanted to clear it. As I removed each vine I spoke to the tree, “I am cutting cords that no longer serve us.” I noticed that slowly more light was coming through. By the end, the tree stood strong and tall, and free. This work tied into my healing work that I was doing for myself at the time. I was practicing some cord cutting meditations that included gratitude and forgiveness.

There is one

• Draw a parallel between pulling weeds and clearing mental/emotional clutter
• Speak to the quiet healing that happens when hands are in the soil and mind is still

IV. A Ritual of Gratitude

• Describe how gratitude naturally arises in your garden practice
• Offer a guided gratitude exercise:
  • Pause and take 3 deep breaths
  • Reflect on something growing (literally or metaphorically) in your life
  • Write down 3 things you’re grateful for—one from nature, one from within, one from your current season
• Optional: invite readers to create a small gratitude offering to the earth (a stone, a flower, a few words whispered into the wind)

V. Soulful Integration

• How gardening and gratitude together create a sanctuary for the soul
• Encourage readers to find their own sacred spaces of tending—whether a garden, a windowsill plant, or simply a quiet morning cup of tea
• Offer a reminder: tending the outer is also tending the inner

VI. Closing Reflection

• End with a poetic or heartfelt message about the interconnectedness of nature and spirit
• Include a journaling prompt or affirmation:
  “As I tend to the earth, I tend to myself. May I grow in grace, grounded in gratitude.”