User avatar
webmaster
Site Admin
Posts: 9476
Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2004 12:59 pm
Location: Amherst, MA USDA Zone 5a

This Garden Is Illegal Blog

There is a gardening blog called [url=https://www.thisgardenisillegal.com/]This Garden is Illegal[/url]. Tonight I read a remarkable post that is a meditation about what we want, what we get, what we achieve, and how it fits into gardening and what we do every day. It says it's about "style over substance" but there is so much substance in this one blog post that it dawned on me that I could read a thousand blogs and articles before I find one with this much food for thought.

It reveals what I see in the best gardeners, and that is the style and substance and experience coming together in a garden that you can walk around and observe and discuss. It's seeing the result of what you know, what your experience has taught you, and perhaps the catalytic ingredient that turns a garden into something special, it's the addition of what you feel. The blog post about [url=https://www.thisgardenisillegal.com/2008/03/2nd-blogiversary-the-meaning-of-it-all.html]what makes gardening magical is here[/url].

It's a brilliant meditation about gardening and how it intersects with the other parts of your life, both past and present. Here's a sample:
One day I realized that sometimes you do waste money on frippery. Pink Converse are like garden gnomes. They may bring no technical value to the yard but they bring delight and whimsy, which we all need.
Delight and whimsy. She put her finger on something that is very important. For me, this is one of the qualities, a special ingredient, that make a garden (or even a person, place or thing) exceptional and a pleasure to be around.

There is no question there is a magical, even spiritual, aspect to gardening. Have you strolled through a garden at night? For me, the best test of whether a garden is ALIVE is to walk through a garden at night with a flashlight. A thriving garden will literally tremble with life. Beetles crawling through the ground. Ants carrying away the detritus of the day. Predators flying through the air swallowing gulps of flying insects. Then stand still and be in the middle of this with the wind blowing through the trees or bushes. One time I startled a bat that launched and circled above my head. These are some of those experiences that are like salt and pepper, they enhance the flavor of living.

I only have a container garden on my balcony where I grow herbs and flowers. It's a little jungle that provides herbs for my food and some visual beauty. But I also spend a significant amount of time in the gardens of friends and family and taking time out to vacation in natural surroundings where the sound of a creek or river are the only sounds around. I envy those of you who have blackberry bushes and plots of veggies. This is a great past time. It slows you down, it teaches you things, it enhances the experience of being alive in the world.
Last edited by webmaster on Tue Jan 11, 2011 2:30 pm, edited 2 times in total.

User avatar
rainbowgardener
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 25279
Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
Location: TN/GA 7b

thanks for your post. The link didn't seem to quite connect to what you are saying (though the pink Convers were there; I do like them), but I loved what you said. I have a workshop I designed and have presented a couple times "Sacred Gardens: Gardening as a Spiritual Path". Gardening can be a spiritual practice in mindfulness, paying attention, slowing down. "Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace." May Sarton. Gardening reconnects us to our senses and grounds us in reality, away from our computers (!) and all the tech. Gardening promotes closeness to creation and thus the Creator, oneness with nature, encountering the sacred. Joyce McGreevy in Gardening By Heart: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Garden, says to garden is to give up control, to fall literally to one's knees and come into closer and closer contact with the tremendous and often bewildering beauty of the living world. May Sarton again "In the garden the door is always open into the "holy" - growth, birth, death. Every flower holds the whole mystery in its short cycle..." There is a lovely little book on this topic called Zen Gardening, by Veronica Ray. You touched my heart and I could go on and on, but I think instead I will get away from my computer and go tend my plants (12 trays of seedlings under lights are calling me!). Thanks so much for your post.

User avatar
gixxerific
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 5889
Joined: Fri Jun 26, 2009 5:42 pm
Location: Wentzville, MO (Just West oF St. Louis) Zone 5B

Nice, she has some great passion, I took a stroll through her blog and it was moving to say the least.

I must go now and tend to my neglected roses and other garden friends, I'm sure they are not happy with me.

Thank You for this. :D



Return to “Gardening Blogs”