From My Garden to Yours

When I ask fellow travelers about their projects, they usually describe their gardens in terms of size, shape and limitations. Although I have never met a garden I did not like, the most important aspect I consider is the gardener himself. Those I find most interesting use creativity as frequently as a rake or shovel.

This creativity process, so important to all gardening activities, ultimately manifests itself in a successful harvest. In the meantime, let us look at the process, not the product. Given a blank palette of a usable space or piece of land, we must now carve out our food production system.

The first steps involve deep consideration of love, family, home and economy in choosing what crops to grow. Grow what you like, not like what you grow! Do you hate to eat eggplant, but love basil? Want to involve young children? Out of town on business eight days a week? This imaginative process to apply the pros and cons to every decision beyond a simple declarative answer is what separates human thought from a computer’s binary logic. It is what I call creative gardening.

Square-foot gardening was all the rage when I first moved to my homestead in the early 1980s. Previous to that was the iconic Victory Gardens, modeled after the classic industrial farm. Container gardening as a stand-alone method mirrored social trends of the era. Bio-intensive, permaculture, deep-mulch, not to mention organic gardening methods are all systems to emulate when conditions permit. The big problem is we are usually limited to choosing just one.

Trying to garden here in Central Florida in competition with the bugs, sandy soil, staccato seasons and worlds of distractions has left many experienced gardeners to leave their tools hanging in the shed. For inspiration, start with rubbing together some seeds, sun, soil and water. While staring at the soil waiting for the seeds to germinate, purposely use the time to plan, design, imitate, extract and copy what you think your ultimate garden will encompass.

Appreciate this period of indecision as the creative zone. This is when we can practice thought processes beyond any other intelligence in the known universe. If you think of something better, adjust course, manipulate the environs, take control and plow forward. It is our garden, and we can do what we want.

I will be the guest speaker at the monthly Organic Growers meeting, sponsored by Simple Living Institute, to be held at Leu Gardens in Orlando on Wednesday, March 16 at 7 p.m. As part of the creative gardening process, I look forward to meeting you!