I had tried gardening before on occasion. I’d plant something here, bring a house plant into my home there (I’m still no good at indoor plants) or try and plant a herb that I had bought at the supermarket. It never really took. I would get busy, forget about it and then suddenly it would be dead and I would confirm that old bias that ‘I’m not a good gardener.’
Then came a moment in time where I was unable to keep being busy. I had to stay home. I had just had a baby and it was the early days of COVID. The days when it was really scary and there were daily updates and it was a lot to process as a new Mum. I got to the point where I wanted to just leave the building. I wanted a productive reason to just be outside.
It was also that time when supermarket shelves were sometimes empty due to issues with logistics and exacerbated by panic buying. I had never seen this in this country and I just couldn’t believe it was possible. It also shamed me that I lived in a highly productive food growing area, and I had no idea of how to access this food. No idea at all.
We were living in a rental at the time and so I decided to tidy up the very small garden that was already there. That didn’t take long. Then I found some very cheap pots and started growing a few little things in them. I started with herbs and a few pretty things but really had no idea what I was doing.
Enter my love affair with Youtube creators. Every time I bought a plant or seeds or suspected that I might be able to propagate from a current plant, I searched for information and found some really trusted sources that I still love today. People like Mark from Self Sufficient Me who is great local Australian resource and Jess from Roots and Refuge Farm who has some great older teaching videos but her newer videos appeal to my over thinking mind. These people showed me what was possible. They also showed me that gardening does not have an assured outcome and you have to be ok with that. They’re also big advocates for imperfect action. ‘Try it and see’. They laid the foundation for my gardening style and made me less judgemental of myself for being sometimes forgetful and difficult to motivate.
I bought more pots. I asked the real estate agent if I could put in a couple of temporary beds in the backyard. I bought soil in bulk and carted it into the backyard by the bucketful due to narrow access and stairs. Suddenly I was growing 6 different types of tomato, okra and kohlrabi that I had never eaten before and was collecting food scraps from the neighbours to put into my compost.
It was not all a success. A lot of the tomatoes were never eaten due to pest pressure and inconsistent watering, some of the beds were slightly too shaded to be terribly productive and my compost was broken into several times by my dog.
Looking back though, the main thing I grew over this time was within myself. I grew resilience. Trust in myself – in my own resourcefulness and ability to work hard. The ability to have a failure and to still try again. This was something I had struggled with throughout my life. I had always taken failure personally, took it as confirmation that I was in fact, a loser. For the first time, I started to see failure as just an opportunity to try again. It didn’t happen immediately, but over time and with enough successes and failures under my belt I started to realise that sometimes the failure was not about me.
I also learnt about faith and hope. Planting a seed in soil and looking after it until it germinates is an excellent lesson in this. You have to have faith that the seed has what it needs to come to life, and you have to hope that it will work out for the best whether it germinates or not.
We now live in our own home, my garden is much bigger and has a much more experienced gardener living in it. At times it reflects these facts. At other times, I wonder what ever led me to believe that any of this was a good idea. Yet, I still persist. I persist because becoming a gardener has taught me more about success and failure than anything else I have ever done. Being in the garden calms my body and my mind and it is good for my family. I also believe that one day, it will be good for my community.
And so, I continue to grow my garden and I continue to let it grow me as a gardener. In the scheme of things, I believe that the latter is the more important of the two.
