The Rewards of Gardening

The gardening season is really upon us, in all of its glory!  We have been enjoying the blossoms of tulips, daffodils, crabapples and lilacs for the past month as we get into the heart of the season and look forward to the fruits, vegetables and blossoms that the warmer months will be certain to offer.  These weeks of May have been stacked with non-stop activity at the garden center and in all of the gardens around the area that we care for.  The pace is exhausting but the rewards of all of our efforts provide the proverbial carrot that continues to urge us onward.  If gardening were a race, it would definitely be more of a marathon than a sprint, and as we ease into our strides after the tiring pace of the springtime, we know that the race is just getting started.

When you get off to a good start, it’s easier to feel the relief as the pace eases up.  But what if you don’t get off to a good start?  What if the weather was too rainy or cold to accomplish what you wanted to accomplish in May and you’re feeling behind as the weeds creep up and the lawn needs mowing and the seedlings haven’t germinated as you’d hoped?  The good news is that no matter when you get started on your garden, there’s always a really good chance that your efforts will provide you with a reward.  It might be a small reward, such as growing a hanging basket that provides a visit from a hungry hummingbird.  Or it might be a larger reward, such as having fresh cut flowers all season long for your dining room table, or enough fruits and vegetables to keep your freezer and pantry filled all winter long.  No matter what the end goal, it’s never too late to get into a patch of dirt and find a fulfilling gardening task to work toward.

I often think about all of the gardens I’ve grown over the years, some more successful than others.  One garden stands out to me that we grew during a time of transition in our lives.  We had just moved to the Adirondacks, but we still lived in Nantucket as well.  We hadn’t yet bought the garden center in Keene, but we had enrolled our children in school here and were back on Nantucket for the summer in a rental house as we ran our landscaping company.  The house that we were renting was in a very secluded lot on the south shore of the island, and we wanted to create a vegetable garden there.  The landlords gave us their permission and we cleared the brush, hacked back the poison ivy, tilled a patch, put up fencing, started seeds, and carved out a pretty impressive little vegetable garden.  It was a ton of work, and we only got one single season out of it, but it was delightful.  Our home that we had lived in on Nantucket prior to that had not had a large enough area in the yard to create a vegetable garden, so we were thrilled to be able to have the space.  I can’t remember everything that we grew that summer, but I do remember the melons.  They were just getting large enough that we were placing paper plates under them to keep them from rotting on the ground as they continued to ripen on the vine.  One morning, I went out to check on the garden and found it was full of crows who had gotten into the garden and were stuck inside.  They virtually ransacked and destroyed the entire thing.  It was a shock and it was frustrating, but it was a lesson in the impermanence that is the practice of gardening.  Although harvesting flowers and vegetables, or creating visually pleasing stretches of perennial gardens are valid gardening goals, sometimes you find that the lessons learned from a wrecked vegetable garden are just as rewarding as the lessons learned from a picture perfect plot. 

What I learned from that disaster of a garden is that it’s always worth it to start a garden, even if it’s temporary or the proceeds don’t match your expectations.  I learned that it’s not worth it to put up fencing on top of a garden to keep the birds out, because when they get in, it prohibits them from getting out and can wreck all of your efforts.  I learned that wherever I go in this world, and whoever I’m with, or during whatever transition my life is in, I’ll always be able to lean in to the habit of gardening.  And I learned that there’s really never a bad time to start a garden.