A few days ago, I took this picture of a new garden I recently installed for a client. It has taken a lot of hours, a lot of energy and no small amount of mental (and physical) frustration at the various obstacles that were encountered and then overcome. It sits in the midst of a woodland, and will need continual maintenance to keep it from being reabsorbed into the ecosystem from which it was carved. With due attention, however, it will be a lovely space filled with color and provide habitat for bees and butterflies from spring into the fall.
While working, I have plenty of time for thinking and, like so many reflective people, I have been wrestling with the violence of the last few days and my response to it. I have wondered about what possible contribution to others' well being I make in my day to day life. I wonder about my role in bringing peace, to whom, I'm not even sure. I spend most of my working hours gardening for people who have the money to pay for someone to take care of their gardens...people who are financially well off, people who are well-educated and work for the federal government or private businesses. They are good people, well-meaning and compassionate to those within their circle of acquaintances, neighbors who look out for and take care of one another. I know that I am fortunate to be working at something that I enjoy, that creates beauty and habitat but, still, I have nagging questions about the real value of all the hard labor and hours I put into the work of being a private gardener.
I recently shared these thoughts with a friend, a therapist who serves people who have experienced significant trauma and its aftermath. She is too well acquainted with the devastation the world can sometimes bring and how it shapes the identity of those who have been severely wounded. As I haltingly broached my questions about the worth of what I do, she had thoughts that, were they from anyone else, I would have been likely to dismiss. She declared that the world needs beauty, especially in the face of so much ugliness, and that it needs to see what can be, rather than only what is. She acknowledged that though I might feel called to do more, I must never think of my gardening in terms of not being enough.
I decided to believe her, and her perspective allowed me to think about lessons learned from gardening that might apply to the healing of our fractured society at large. Gardens, be they flowers or vegetables, are never stagnant. They are never the same, two years in a row. Challenges that were once conquered reappear without warning. Remedies that once worked, are effective no longer. Inattention to the needs of individual plants invites their ruin, and inattention to the whole of the garden invites chaos and disintegration. One cannot long turn his or her back on what they have nurtured and expect an abundant harvest from healthy plants.
Gardeners are some of the most optimistic people on the planet. When one approach does not work, they try another and are ever watchful for the need to adapt to challenging conditions. They may grumble and complain at impediments, but they seldom give up on their goal of a harvest-their practice is for the long term. They learn from past mistakes, readily share what has worked well for them andask questions from those who know more than they do.
Gardens, just like society and the individuals from which it is composed, need beneficence, defined as "the doing of good, active goodness or kindness". Beauty in both comes from the commitment to hard work and long hours, days, weeks, months and years of care. In a garden setting, it is the caretakers who do most of the work. In society, each of us either contributes to or subtracts from the well being of the whole. What if each of us were to consciously choose to contribute to the well being of the area in which we lived? In our different settings and situations, what would that look like?
I have a t-shirt that, up until now, I have felt was just a little too cliche-ish...a little too cute and folksy, but I have changed my mind. Just like the shirt, I sometimes feel worn and ragged, even cracked and faded in my efforts to contribute to the society around me that needs my involvement and care. Whether that effort be working in client's gardens, involvement in my church and with its members, choosing to be intentionally kind to people in the grocery store or on the boardwalk at the river, I believe that each instance of caring surely must contribute to a healthier whole. Indeed, I am reminded that to plant a garden or to work for the good of all really is to believe in and be willing to hope for something that may not be readily visible at the outset. The work of gardening and of caring for those we know and those we don't know is built on a hope that we might not always recognize, but without which nothing would be accomplished, or even begun. The hope that, in some small way, our contribution will matter and will bear fruit.
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