8 Lessons Home Gardening Taught Me About Life –Wish I Had Known Them Earlier
I would have had a better understanding of my life’s problems if I had started early in my life
Gardening is a hobby for many, passion for some, and work for a few lots. All of us have surely done gardening during some part of our lives. But not me- until the lockdown happened in 2021. It is embarrassing for me to admit but true.
I always wanted to have a beautiful garden, well-crafted lawn, prettiest flowers, and scores of healthy vegetables. However, I did not want to make my hands dirty in the soil.
Well, a big thanks to lockdown, I was drawn towards my garden due to boredom and wanted to explore this aspect of my life to see how my garden treats me.
To my surprise, I started enjoying gardening a lot. Never in my life did I think, I could learn so much from whatever I did in my garden. Gardening taught me important lessons too -life lessons to be precise.
1.Nature is Healing
When you start gardening, you first prepare the soil, arrange pots, collect healthy seeds, etc. It’s more like nurturing your baby.
I started gardening at the beginning of June 2021
June is a good month to start gardening in India as it’s monsoon time. Wherever you see, you will witness lush greenery. So, with the help of some good books on gardening and some youtube videos started my journey -right from soaking seeds to planting them, it was like taking care of a baby.
Preparing the soil by manually touching it to get the feel of the soil at first feels dirty but gradually you feel nice as you are doing it for your plants.
I invested my time in my garden and it gave me immense pleasure. It was therapeutic- made me happy, calm, and content as I could see the fruit of my hard work.
Seeing your plants, flowers grow and bloom makes you realize you are ready to go to any length to see them healthy.
2.Nourishment should be Continuous
Plants are like humans. They too need care, love, and nourishment.
As humans need care, support, love, and nourishment from time to time, in the same way, watering plants, giving them manure when needed, spraying fungicide, and neem oils make them disease-free.
It’s a continuous process- taking care of plants only once will not help, they need constant monitoring.
In the same way, we humans too need nourishment in the form of appreciation from others, care and concern from peers, relatives, love from family, friends, partners, and lots of quality time to pour our hearts out, share our problems, etc.
Continuous nourishment makes both plants and humans healthy.
3.Growth is Inevitable but Takes Time
There is no room for hurry. Growth takes time. You cannot expect miracles here. If you are planting a seed one day and expecting a seedling the next day, then you are living in illusion, my friend.
It doesn’t work either way for plants as well as humans.
Growth is inevitable.
You cannot stop it.
However, it takes time.
A plant will grow at its own pace and rhythm, you cannot force it to show growth in your pace. Therefore, have patience and give it time.
Humans too grow both mentally and physically at their own pace. You cannot force a child to show maturity at a tender age. Being and behaving maturely is for the grown-ups.
So, this life skill makes you realize we all meet our milestones at the right time.
4. Be Responsible
When I started with gardening, I realized I had to give my plants equal time as any other chores. I had to water some plants every day to avoid wilting while others needed to be watered alternately.
I was responsible for my plants. I had to take care of them every single day even if I was too occupied with work, lazy, or didn’t feel like taking care of them.
I couldn’t really afford to forget about them, as they too are living beings. They need our care and attention regardless of our busy schedules.
So, one has to own up their responsibility.
5. Never Give Up
While gardening, I made a lot of mistakes. Many plants suffered and died due to this act. I was discouraged, thought of giving up gardening, and end the mess.
As many as 10 plants died out of 40 plants I owned. I felt bad as I couldn’t save them but I had 40 more plants that were healthy and beaming with life.
This pushed me to believe I can still do gardening.
Maybe, I overwatered or underwatered some plants, exposed plants to too much sunlight, or kept them in too much shade. I had to fix this- I knew my gardening knowledge was limited.
I did extensive research on each plant to find out where I went wrong. I started afresh with the same plants on the same pots where each had wilted away.
Finally, my hard work paved the way. Now all plants survived and looked fresh and green.
I was relieved.
Lesson learned-never give up.
6.Patience
There is a famous saying, ‘Rome was not built in a day. This proverb stands perfect for gardening as well. We cannot reap results in a day. We have to nurture plants like babies and take utmost care until they become mature.
This requires a lot of patience and perseverance.
In the same way, human life too needs patience and perseverance to smoothly sail through the hardships of life.
7. It’s Okay to Be Alone At Times
We need our peer groups, partners, and family around us all the time. There are times we want to be left alone without any reason.
This could be a welcome change for us as a human we can dive deep into the realms of our conflicting mind and heart to seek out problems.
When a seed is planted in the soil, it is all alone to fend for itself. The baby seed parents do provide it with sunshine, water, and manure to grow.
The baby seed is all alone inside the soil and should build its confidence and strength to emerge out of the soil victorious.
Being alone at times makes us stronger and helps us to ponder on the real `Me`.
8. You cannot control everything
When I was well equipped with gardening skills, I believed nothing can go wrong.
I took good care of my plants, watered them regularly, gave them enough sunlight, weeded them when needed, gave the best of organic manure but I realized I had no control over their growth, fruits, flowers, and seeds, and lifespan.
If we can control everything and predict everything, life will not be fun for a long time.No matter how much we try, some things are not under our control. Moreover, it’s okay, lest we’ll become GOD.
To conclude, I started gardening to escape my monotonous life but in this process got to learn some important life lessons. If you are stressed and left with nothing to do, try out gardening, it helps you to heal and make you understand that all of us are humans after all. Plants are great companions, you can talk to them, share your worries and good times, keep them in your room to increase positivity, learn from them all the time.
