Self care by growing a garden

Ha ha @Former-Member

Trees that are tooo big for their boots can get dangerous with falling limbs etc ....

I bet if my father had lived longer and managed to find a plot he would have loved gardening too. He encouraged my love of trees and nature, not everybody gets the opportunity. So many have things they take or granted or do not realise how far other people's experience is from their own.

@Appleblossom, part of me would love my veggie garden to look like that... part of me questions the practicality of growing such huge swathes of each veggie, and not having proper access paths... Maybe my higgledy-piggledy garden with the flowers, herbs and vegs all jumbled together works better in real life, even if it looks wild and all over the place. 🙂

@Smc Lovely to hear from you.

Its certainly not how my garden looks. Its from poly gardening so all things are relative. It is about not planting monocultures in market gardens .... rather than a home garden ...

Mine probably looks a bit like yours but is too small for a vegie patch. I just have a bit of chives and split my rosemary bushes as they can be so robust.

I also plant on the verges around my court which has become a big garden now, and is backed by a green belt of a board of works drain, but its not my property so I keep it to very hardy plants, propagated from my own. Probably raised the Real estate value for the neighbours ...but it has kept my steadily active and grounded for last 17 years ... and it looks like it. Meant my son could find me pottering somewhere outside over the years, whenever he got the yearning to look for me and I was not in the house ... so had lots of good consequences.

Love the sound of your garden.

@Appleblossom @Smc I love what I call "messy" and productive gardens. Whilst in my own garden I like block plantings of the same colour, our garden is certainly not clipped to within an inch of its life and the hedging is loose - placed to give the garden some structure and to ensure appropriate spacing so pruning is not required (yes, I do measure for even spacing and follow the "odd number is visually more appealing" rule). The "fill in" plants I put in vary and are more random, a mix of annuals, bulbs and perennials.

You have a lot of space to manage and of course structure helps.

Formal gardens have real appeal.

I took lots of cuttings from house I lived in and potted them up and moved them from place til I settled in new house with only builders clay.

I could not afford to mass plant so it was very much buy one tube plant at a time and see how it took approach ... but I liked that, as it was a good way for me to learn about gardening. Not TMI. ha ha ... I could work upwards from my earth science knowledge ... rather than carry on about smelling the roses ... or what was "beautiful" ... which I and my children were treated as inferior .... so much to recover from in my marriage ....

Funny .... now I look at my old photos ... and can see hubby was lucky ...

I have finally relaxed enough to be able to smell ... was getting upset about too many casual throw away lines ... about cheering up when I was still struggling with my massive grief.

@Former-Member @Smc @Shaz51 @Adge @Determined

Gardening buddies ....

I am a patient gardener @Appleblossom , a lot of my block plantings have happened as I too have propagated plants from cuttings, divisions or seed. Being in a gardening club helped as we had a "trade table" where all sorts of plants could be purchased for a song.

Ditto the "single plant" and propagate it approach @Former-Member, @Appleblossom.

I grew up learning how to grow plants. Dad gave me bean seeds to plant in my own garden bed when I was about five. I remember even earlier, when I was maybe three years old, Mum showing me which way up to plant gladioli corms. Mum and Dad showed me how to take cuttings, layer plants, divide clumps, collect seeds. Mosty just through me watching them do it, with a bit of direct instruction now and then.

Mum used to propagate a lot of plants to sell, either at markets or from home. If my sister or I grew a plant, we could get a bit of extra pocket money if it sold.

So I've never seen the point in buying a dozen of one plant when, with a little patience, you could grow several dozen from the one. If I'm buying a plant from a nursery, often I base my choice o which pot has the best potential for cutting material or divisions. 🙂 I've even got cutting grown snapdragons doing nicely at the moment. (Yep, even some annuals will grow as cuttings. 😄 )

@Appleblossom, I think there really is something healing about gardening. I wonder sometimes if it's simply that gardens are all about life and growth in themselves, and that helps set our minds on the right track.

@Smc @Appleblossom to quote Dr Oliver Sacks a neurologist and author

"As a writer, I find gardens essential to the creative process; as a physician, I take my patients to gardens whenever possible. All of us have had the experience of wandering through a lush garden or a timeless desert, walking by a river or an ocean, or climbing a mountain and finding ourselves simultaneously calmed and reinvigorated, engaged in mind, refreshed in body and spirit. The importance of these physiological states on individual and community health is fundamental and wide-ranging. In forty years of medical practice, I have found only two types of non-pharmaceutical “therapy” to be vitally important for patients with chronic neurological diseases: music and gardens."

He also says

"I cannot say exactly how nature exerts its calming and organizing effects on our brains, but I have seen in my patients the restorative and healing powers of nature and gardens, even for those who are deeply disabled neurologically. In many cases, gardens and nature are more powerful than any medication."

and

"Clearly, nature calls to something very deep in us. Biophilia, the love of nature and living things, is an essential part of the human condition. Hortophilia, the desire to interact with, manage and tend nature, is also deeply instilled in us. The role that nature plays in health and healing becomes even more critical for people working long days in windowless offices, for those living in city neighborhoods without access to green spaces, for children in city schools or for those in institutional settings such as nursing homes. The effects of nature’s qualities on health are not only spiritual and emotional but physical and neurological. I have no doubt that they reflect deep changes in the brain’s physiology, and perhaps even its structure."