Why do people garden?

I have been getting on the bike and riding into work again now that our hottest weather is over.  As I rode through the neighborhoods I have chosen as my route to and from work, I admire the work that different people have put into their yards.  I started thinking about all the reason why people garden.  
As satisfying as I find my hobby, I also know it is a lot of work.  There are people who don't do any gardening because of that reason.  During my ride in I came up with various reasons why we find ourselves outside digging in the dirt.


I enjoy being outside and gardening takes me out of doors to work and to enjoy the work I have done.  I have a little bit of heaven right out my door where I can go to sip my coffee, read a book, watch the birds, or take a nap.  I don't have to drive anywhere or share that space with people I may not enjoy being around.  I can visit over the fence or across the table with my neighbors or host a party which brings a crowd into our yard, if our extended families are a part of that.  We garden for ourselves and we garden for others to enjoy with us.

Another reason for my obsession is to watch the changing of the seasons and to enjoy wildlife.  These two pictures show the same garden just a month apart this spring, but show that the color and texture vary greatly depending on what part of the year we are in.  Today I look out my window and see another garden different from these two.  I can tell what month it is by the lilacs and forsythia blooms along the hedge row.  I have watched birds sing their territorial songs, nest, and move on.  I hear the cranes, geese, herons, and other birds migrate overhead in spring and fall.  At night and in the dead of winter, the great horned and screech owls call out from the wooded park next door.  Hawks soar overhead and sometimes make a meal of something smaller at my backyard feeder.  I have stood in the same spot where I took this picture and have watched deer cross our city street and walk down the neighbor's lawns.  Fox have stood and watched me watching them on more than one morning before work.  Coyotes have peered at us through the bushes in the dark of night and the light of day.  Our first spring we had a pheasant male who squawked around for over a month before moving on to find better mating territory.  This all in the middle of an urban area.  It wouldn't be quite so ideal if it wasn't for the public green spaces and the efforts of all the private gardeners that surround us.

Gardeners don't just do it for themselves.  If you've ever watched someone spend a spring day planting until they couldn't stand straight, the first thing most gardeners do is take their tired bodies out of their yard and look in.  We care about how it looks to those passing by.  How it looks from my front door comes second to how it looks walking by.  The efforts of all those people along my bike route are what take me on a path that winds through a variety of streets and schools rather than taking the straightest route down a busy, noisy street.  I savor the moments of quiet and beauty as I pedal along.  A smiling face and a cheerful "Good morning" are the icing on the cake.  Gardening is a community activity that shows you care about the other people you share your part of the globe with.  I know my grandmother enjoyed her flowers, but she also enjoyed the pleasure that it brought to others who looked into her backyard with her.

One of the last, but certainly not least, reason people garden is to have fresh foods to eat that are readily available and economical to produce.  Some do it on a larger scale where others can come in and pick or buy from their crops.  One of my fondest memories of "getting out of town" involved my first trip to Door County to pick cherries with my family.  We didn't go many places and taking a car trip to pick one of my favorite fruits ranks high on my list.  Even as a pre-teenager, gardening was in my blood.


I still look back at these pictures and remember the day we spent in the cherry orchard.  I know now that most people go to Door County to relax and shop, but to me that trip to the cherry orchard to "pick our own" was an exotic destination.  Even all the hours pitting and canning the cherries the next day did not diminish the experience for me.  It was great fun being with my mom and all the rest for the day of picking and picnicking.  





The first large garden we ever had was the year my dad was diagnosed with cancer.  He thought the back pain he got was from roto-tilling the large plot our elderly neighbors were letting us use that summer.  It was my first experience with planting potatoes and corn.  We never had the rows of vegetables to tend in our own small yard so this was a project I enjoyed doing as a family.  It got to be more of a burden as summer wore on and doctor visits put more of the gardening onto us kids, but it didn't turn me off to gardening.  I still remember digging those first potatoes out of the ground.  It was just amazing that a little cut up potato could do all that!  Mom shared with us memories of growing up on the farm as we weeded and picked in the garden that summer.  I don't think I would have learned nearly as much about my grandparents and mother as I did that summer over rows of beans and Swiss chard. (By the way, there is such a thing as too much Swiss chard.)


After we lost Dad, we put in another plot behind my sister's house.  The former owners had a large plot turned and she had no interest in using it.  We put in the seeds and then spent the summer making the short bike ride down to take care of the plants.  There was something wonderful about watching the plants and fruits come from those tiny seeds.  We dealt with the disappointment of losing some things to the wild creatures that lived in the nearby woods, but we still had plenty left and some to share.  Mom was working full-time now, so the gardening was less memorable for lack of the company and her available time.  Even though my sister still lived in the house, we never used the garden to the large extent that we did that first year.

I still put in my own vegetables each year after moving out.  My husband and I put a vegetable garden in half of an elderly neighbor's plot in our first apartment together while I finished off earning my degree. Not only did we have plenty of produce on a budget, but we talked over plants with the widower who needed company more than vegetables.  We also learned that five hills of zuchinni are four too many for a young couple.  Our first apartment in the city gave us less garden space but still a place to grow a few tomatoes and other vegetables as well as a few flowers that I got with my employee discount from the garden center I worked at.  Our third apartment attracted me not only because it was our first apartment on the lower level, (I had been hauling car seats and diaper bags up to a second floor for two years.) but it also had a nice wide, empty garden border that let me vegetable garden on an even larger scale.  There were even two apple trees in the back yard that not only gave fruit but were the right distance apart for a large hammock and swing. The landlord also let me dig up some more lawn to put in a perennial border along the fence when he saw that I was not the kind of tenant to do things half way.  Even after we moved out, he kept up the perennial garden because it made that duplex in his row of buildings, look much more distinctive over the others.  I had even put in a maple tree before we moved where our compost bin stood knowing that the apple trees were on their way out.  The tree is now providing shade for two different families that rent that space now.

We moved out of the apartments and finally had a space that didn't require someone else's permission to plant.  It has evolved and changed over the years.  The swimming pool that came with the house was used and loved until it needed more help than we wanted to give it.  I finally got my raised vegetable beds in the coveted, sunny part of the yard.  My husband even left an extra tier open for addition of a third board when I am ready to bend a little less.  You can see in this photo my neighbor's large vegetable plot and fruit trees in the background.  We exchange ideas and vegetables over the fence.  The girls remember how in early summer, he would throw strawberries up out of the patch and into the pool while they were swimming.  


Gardening is not just about the plants.  It is about the community that it builds.  It gives people a place to relax and share with each other.  Some people garden and put up walls and hedges to close others out.  Some open up their yards to let others in.  It is a chance to learn from others and share what you have learned along the way.  Like my retired neighbor says when he gets an answer to a question he asks me, "My pa always said, 'You can never tell who you'll learn something from.' "