Why I garden

Maybe this has happened to you: you’re out for an evening walk in the neighborhood when you come upon a garden, creative in design, bursting with color, satisfying to look at it. And you wonder: how did they think to do that?

Or maybe this is closer to your experience: you throw on favorite overalls, soft shoes, and floppy hat and can’t wait to get on your hands and knees to feel the soil of your garden, to lose yourself in your landscape as you nurse and prune, cultivate and tinker, and enjoy your flowers and plants.

Or maybe you identify with author Jay Caspian Kang, who recently wrote a New York Times Opinion article, entitled “The Joy of Terrible Gardening.”

Kang writes:

Contempt doesn’t always have to be sustained or even all that intense.
Sometimes it can be sporadically felt or unfocused. I, for example, hate
the three bougainvilleas in my yard. Each is disappointing in its own
way: too spindly, too leafy, too dead. They make me angry, but only
when I look at them, which isn’t all that often. One shouldn’t parent
one’s children with this attitude, but I find that it’s the ideal way to garden.

 

                                                                        —New York Times, March 17, 2022

The number of reasons why we garden are as numerous as there are people. And why we garden and what we get out of it vary as well.

It got us to thinking: why do YOU garden?

It got us asking: what if we shared our whys? and shared our best practices, worst failures, and interesting anecdotes about our gardens? and the people who share in cultivating them?

This is where you come in.

We want to hear your gardening stories. We want to see your photos. Tell us why you do what you do. Maybe you have an interesting success story or you may remember a time when it all went wrong. Maybe a neighbor helped with the perfect advice that you wish that everyone knew.

You get the idea.

Why are you a gardener?

Share your story with us below and we may feature you in an upcoming article in The Mowing Life section of the Joy of Mowing web site!