We talk a fair bit about our personal connections to the living world at OnePlanet, the wider need for all to feel interwoven in community, as well as the myriad of health benefits that access to nature unlocks. Often, our work explores how we can better embed the relationships of connectivity between people and the living world into policy and strategy, like through community food growing initiatives, urban nature-based solutions or social prescribing.
What we don’t often talk about or try to strategise however, is the challenge we each face in finding something which brings us to a place of inner peace, which can settle nerves and distill the bubbling up of anxieties. I wonder if it’s even possible to strategise around something that is so fundamental to human spiritual wellbeing? The concepts of objectivity and the bottom line in decision making feel opposed to the hard to grasp, subjective and experiential levels encompassed in meditative relaxation.
For some of course, this inner peace might be accessed with a religion or God(s). My colleague Pooran is a self-proclaimed born-again Hindu, and whilst I am not drawn to any one religion, I feel sure that my place of worship is the enveloping embrace of a forest, and my almost daily practice is in the garden.
I want to note here that like many others living in a city, I don’t actually have access to my own garden… but I do have a balcony where I grow all sorts of plants in whatever containers I can find. I keep seeds from summers gone by, I experiment with new varieties, I spend time touching and rearranging the plants and I do all of this with no overarching aims beyond spending time and getting creative and caring
There is a soothing rhythm to the garden, the first thing I do in the morning is to raise my blinds a little so that I can see the lavender and strawberry plants outside my window.
The rhythm passes between seasons too, during the bleary grey days of winter I look forward to the first signs of spring – which mean that the year’s garden can begin. In the summer, watering and picking become a nightly ritual. Every year for the last few, I have grown edible plants – herbs, fruits, flowers and vegetables, adding to my collection and experimenting with varieties. It’s never a big crop, but every home grown, guaranteed pesticide-free, seed to fruit that I eat feels special, like a ‘coming home’.
This feeling of connection is what keeps me coming back to gardening, the peace and sense of serenity I feel whilst caring for my plants and the insects that come to call them home (or lunch). There is more to it than this though, there are the connections you forge with the plants, the people you swap seeds and seedlings with, the knowledge shared, the bacteria which improves your gut health, the learning to feel grateful for the rain. Potentially, the most beneficial element is the time it creates for me to process the world beyond the garden, the news or the stress I feel or the relationships I’m navigating, in little pockets of time carved out.
Gardening also continues to teach me practical and spiritual lessons …Which leads me on to potatoes – and my lack of growing anything substantial enough to be called one this year. In Autumn last year I planted seed potatoes into sacks of soil with holes cut into the underside and felt hopeful when the first shoots raised their heads above the soil line. However, I’d not cut enough drainage holes into the sacks and so the sprouting potatoes soon began to rot. This left me picking through the soil and rotten mush to find teeny tiny potatoes the size of a fingernail so that I could use it again (see bottom left of the flowerpots photo). Needless to say, gardening continues to teach me patience and to see the funny side of things!! It is making me re-evaluate how I approach my work and ask bigger questions around connectivity, resilience and think about solutions to loneliness and the mental health crisis.
This is far from all I have to say for now on gardening, spiritual health and growing your own, but it is enough for now. Please go and touch some soil and say hi to the bees for me!
