Week #10. Sharing Magic.
Thinking like a kid in the garden makes gardening fun.
The Art of Growing Food newsletter is published weekly. Essays are reflections on the food and flowers I grow in my Vermont garden. Each week, I’ll share recipes and kitchen garden designs, and if you’d like to know more about my books and lectures, I invite you to visit: www.ellenogden.com
“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” --Roald Dahl
Hello Everyone.
Push a seed in the ground; let it sprout, then watch and wait while the plant grows. In life, we are told it’s the journey, not the destination, and the same is true for planting a garden.
Start with a plan, follow the schedule, and check off a list of chores. That is how most of us grow a garden. Yet for a child, watching a plant grow fills them with excitement, eagerness, and curiosity. They want to smell, touch and taste everything, dig and fill holes with water, crack open a dried pod to find pink and purple bean seeds, and eat dinner standing up, grazing in the pea patch
We can all learn from children how to become better gardeners. Step back and notice the magic.
For me, it hasn’t always been this way. The first few years of building the garden, and learning how and when to start seeds were definitely hard work. I told myself, “I’m going out to work in the garden” throwing a shovel over my shoulder as if it were my duty to get things done. It was only when I began to lighten up a bit, and take time to sit on a garden bench to reflect on the beauty, that could I substitute the word “work” with “play”.
My attitude shifted, and everything changed.
It was one of those long afternoons in the spring garden, that coincides with the lilacs blooming, casting a sweet aroma over the kitchen garden. I watched wrens take twigs to their nesting box and took pride in small seedlings beginning to emerge from the seeds I’d planted the week before.
I took my muddy boots off at the door, already anticipating another glorious afternoon when I was struck that what I most love about gardening. It is not just the plants, and the food I grow, but the way it makes me feel: like a kid again.
How often do adults get to play in the dirt, spray the hose, dig holes, and putter around the yard aimlessly except while gardening? Perhaps, I’ve never grown up. It was my Peter Pan moment when I realized that I never had to transition from childhood into adulthood, as long as I had a garden.
The late artist Robert Dash once said, “ A garden is a form of autobiography.” Take time to reflect on how you want your garden to look and feel. Plan for the long term, yet embrace the moment and spontaneity. Allow volunteer flowers to grow in the paths, observe how poppies drop their petals and seedpods form, and invite wildlife to the yard to be reminded of how everything truly is connected. Above everything else, invite children into your garden and watch them play. A garden is where the magic begins, and learning follows.
Sending you a little magic for your garden.
With love,
Ellen O.
Ellen Ecker Ogden
Author of The Complete Kitchen Garden and The New Heirloom Garden, among other books for cooks who love to garden. Come visit! I’m hosting a Vermont Weekend for gardeners. Read more: https://linktr.ee/ellenogden
Love this Ellen. One of my favorite moments in my garden was when I put the sprinkler on to get at a dry patch- and still decided to garden- I was dripping wet and laughing from a place deep inside- pure joy
Your piece hit me deeper as well as for the past two springs and summers I have enjoyed sharing my garden with our 7 year old foster son. We built a sand box together and I put in a bench where he and I would watch the squirrels, birds, butterflies and beans. He returned to his birth family in November, and I haven’t started my Spring garden partly because it is still snowing here in March and partly because I think it’s a little tender. Thank you!
I love experimenting and having my own space to do whatever I want. I like Ruth Stout, the author. She did what she wanted, no matter what so-called experts recommended.