Gardening and consistency

I love the garden, but I, and I am quite giddy with delight as I say this, I have come to realise I am not a fan of the actual gardening. Ha! What a journey, to be able to speak a realisation about myself. What a tentative delight it is!

It should come as no surprise that I’ve battled with this, coming from a large family of green-fingered garden geniuses, resplendent in their piles of vegetables and home-grown preserves, borders of jewel-like flowers growing happily to the sky. I have tried, I really have. I love the idea of gardening. I want to love it, I really do. I’ve even almost convinced myself, whilst putting endless seeds in the soil, watering that little bit of hope that dark, cold days will soon pass and shoots will spill forth from the ground. But no. Inevitably, hardly anything sprouts. The things that do get eaten immediately by supersnails (even super-hot chillies, which only serve to make the snails grow stronger and more filled with rage and teeth). If something progresses to getting actually planted in the ground, it will, by some miracle of nature, become either grass or a dandelion. No, I don’t know how, either.

So, the last few years, as I have played with the dawning realisation that this is just not for me, I’ve let the garden just grow by itself, madly, wildly, full of weeds and yes, full of grass, full of dandelions, full of THINGS. I’ve embraced this funny, rising feeling of joy and freedom, until it spills from my lips in a wild giggle, watching shieldbugs lay eggs on a huge rambling rose that’s twined itself up the holly tree and yelling I DON’T CARE and feeling all kinds of wonderful. Because not caring has given something to the wild. Nature holds me now. The garden is its own beast.

I don’t care that couch grass is taking over the driveway. I don’t care that teasels spring from cracks in the paving, making bare-legged wandering a veritable gauntlet. I don’t care that the same teasels have created a huge, towering field for themselves in what used to be the veg patch. I don’t care that dandelions run rampant and brambles wander enthusiastically around the perimeter, eyeing up the rest of the garden with pure intent. Occasionally we’ll get a little enthusiastic and hack a path so the postie can still get through to the letterbox without being absorbed into a particularly enthusiastic clump of crocosmia. But in true metaphoric style, letting it all go has exploded into more than we ever imagined. The new, wild friends who have moved in to live in this little patch of space with us have shown us that this earth really knows best. “Stop interfering, let us get on with it!” shout the spiders spinning silk between teasel heads. “Thanks for the flowers!” buzz the fluffy bees, sharing nectar with wasps, flies, hoverflies and moths. Voles speedrun through the undergrowth. Frogs rustle in patches of wilderness.

Year by year, things come and go and rise and fall. Last year was borage, this year is teasels. Last year was foxes, this year, badgers. Giant dragonflies pop in over the fence, flitting their diamond wings and glistening all sorts of metallic colours. It’s great. The house becomes more and more permeable with time. Attic bees. Bats. Birds. Mice in the walls. Squirrels in the eaves. Moss. Ivy trying its very best to enter the windows and come and live indoors, thank you very much. Spiders living their dramatic, leggy lives in dark corners, and come August and September, at speed across the living room floor.

Instead of gardening, I wander around and pick things from the hedge that look tasty. Huge blackberries (fighting the nettles to get to the best ones). Wild strawberries, hiding under leaves tumbling from stone walls, super sweet and shiny red. Rosehips from the aforementioned climber, the angriest plant in the garden, seemingly putting specific effort into spiking your skin wherever possible. Boundless oregano, self-seeded and abundant. This is what I like. Dipping in and out, sharing the harvest with our wild friends.

I wondered why gardening is so hard. Looking back over my years of failed attempts, it seems kind of obvious now. Gardening takes consistency. It takes sustained effort. It takes planning and willpower and doing things for no immediate reward. You are definitely in it for the long haul. A lot of work, for a distant, future reward. All of these things are the exact opposite of how my brain works. No wonder I’m tapping out.

The big thing was that I felt like I should like gardening. Thousands of people find solace, support, community, meaning in tending a garden. I know myself that spending time here is healing. But there is also pressure for me. I tried and tried, and when my anxiety got really bad, even waiting until dark to run out to quickly try and do something in the garden whilst no one else was out. But I didn’t get better at gardening. I didn’t suddenly find a seam of joy, or a sense of relaxation. I didn’t get de-stressed, I got more stressed. The garden got ‘messier’ and I got more and more overwhelmed. Why couldn’t I do this?

It all makes sense now, to this brain built for rummaging hedgerows in autumn for the best berries, not for tilling and caring for those berries in the preceding months. This brain built for variety, quick interest and a little chaos, not planting plans, waiting for things to grow, and then remembering to plant them in bigger pots. It’s just not me. Maybe one day in the future some miracle will descend upon me and I’ll gaze at the garden in a golden haze of understanding, the joy of plantsmanship suddenly realised, planting whole crops of broad beans that never get rust or destroyed by hungry molluscs. Maybe one day I’ll actually be able to grow one entire flower from a seed. Or even from a plug and grow. Here’s hoping.

But for now, I just scatter care to the wind. It’s one of the first things I’ve solidly learned about myself, and being able to speak it out is such a thrill. From decades of not really knowing who I am, to being able to say I don’t think this is for me. Yes, I’ll shove a garlic in the ground and be surprised by it again come summer solstice. I might fling some bee mix at a patch of earth, give it precisely one watering can and cross my fingers. I might snip a particularly enthusiastic bramble now and again, or get into a fight with the angry rose bush. But that’s about it for me. I’m happy with that.

Like I say, maybe it’ll change in the future. I’ve grown things before, in a rented house with lovely soil and a proper veg patch, and loved eating beetroot straight from the ground, growing a cabbage bigger than the sink and picking bowl after bowl of warm, ripe strawberries. Someone else had spent years improving the soil. Someone else planted the strawberry patch. A gardener was included with the rent to tidy up and sort the lawn. Left to myself, I fully imagine that huge lawn would have taken on a wild tinge, too. So we will see. For now, I’ll wander on into the wilderness, and see what next year holds.