Knowing a Garden: Fostering, Birthing, and Being Patient

2009 Chart - Zone 10

Planning my expanded co-creative soil garden is interesting this year: Since there are already plants in the ground, I am not able to simply sketch the empty land on graph paper and ask what to plant. Instead, I need to draw the area on graph paper, fill in what plants are already there (only some of which I have names for), and then ask what to take out as well as what new plantings to put in. That represents an increase in planning workload! Except, I’m wondering if the process of drawing, charting and identifying plants already in the soil brings me into deeper connection with the garden than when I start with a blank slate? Or, is that just something I’ve manufactured to help me feel better about the extra work?

Last summer, I dug up the grass from half of my front lawn and created what we now call “The Farm.” My two children had started corn, melon and herbs from seed in flats, and those plants needed to go into the ground. I set an intention for The Farm and worked co-creatively with Nature to bring that intention into form. I had information about the size of the area to dedicate to The Farm, which of the seedlings to transplant into The Farm’s plot, what additional plantings to purchase and add to The Farm, and what soil, additives, etc. to bring to The Farm. Until I was well through the growing season, I didn’t really feel like I “knew” The Farm that well, however.

I was reminded of when I gave birth to my first baby: I expected to know him right away, and I was surprised at feeling like I didn’t know him at all! Of course, this makes sense objectively, but I’d carried him inside my own body for months and months and was certain I’d have a deeper knowing about who he was immediately. It took me a couple of weeks to come to terms with the fact that I’d have to be patient about that whole knowing thing. Even now, nine years later, I’m still learning who he is.

And that’s what it was like with The Farm. Since I worked co-creatively to determine the location and make-up of that garden (in essence, to “birth” that garden), I thought that I’d know more about it right away. Instead, the process of learning was slow, methodical, and glorious. Again, I was reminded to be patient (and I look forward to the next round of learning this season).

My garden beds that already have plantings in them – plants that I inherited from a previous owner or ones that I added before I began working co-creatively – seem far more familiar to me, even at this early stage in the 2009 growing season. It’s like I’ve been the foster parent to these garden beds and now I’m officially adopting them as my own. I already know quite a lot about them, but from a distance. I’m realizing that I’ll have to un-learn some (or many) things that I already think “I know” about these areas of the garden – things I’ve decided and assumed that may not actually true, or things that were true at one time and now no longer apply. 

So, perhaps adopting a foster garden does not mean a deeper connection with or knowing of a garden than birthing one from an empty plot. Perhaps the initial connection is, simply, different. As I identify plants in my foster beds and carefully mark their locations on my garden charts, I will remind myself that fostering these beds for the past 10 years does not mean that I own them, or control them, or truly know them. I will remind myself that, just as I parent my son about whom I still learn every day, the truth about this garden will reveal itself to me at its own pace, and my job is to be present and open and ready to learn. And, lest I hurry up and forget, to be patient.