Novice, such unexpected joy

[bookh]

We live on DH family farm. I am not exaggerating when I say our house is in a field.

I previously worked 15 plus hours a day as a criminal solicitor, and rarely set foot in the garden. I would let sheep in to eat the grass, and occasionally buy plants at the garden centre which the sheep ate.

Last year I was at home with my one year old and we went to work on it. Cutting grass weekly, play area made. I then weeded miles of borders, overgrown taller than me, leaving anything I thought might be a plant.

Then I had another baby and did nothing over winter. This year I wood chipped the old borders and weeded daily. Then I started on the forty million pots, planters, old sinks, baths and buckets.

I take kids weekly to the local garden centre and buy only from the search and rescue, spending pennies. Dd and I grew sunflowers, and some veg from seed.

Today Dd was playing, baby was sleeping. I looked around and it is beautiful. Don't get me wrong I have no idea what I'm doing but it's tidy, colourful and looks like a cottage garden. Poppies and Daisy's have come up, a few things have not survived but most of it is lovely.

The best bit, I feel calm and recharged out there. Dd and I love pottering about, she is chief water girl and snail mover.

I never imagined my mental health would be helped so much by gardening. It's just amazing. It was such a huge task but now it's five minutes a day max.

Silly thread really but wanted to share the overall unexpected benefits.

How lovely :)

It is remarkably good for your mental health isn't it!

@LittleMissSneezy it really is. I think with lockdown and the isolation of two under two I would be in quite a mess now.

It gives me routine to the day and Dd is also getting so much enjoyment.

Even the ability to say right today we play in the garden and I know it's safe and ready for her to do that.

What a lovely thread. 🙂 I also find it very therapeutic to spend a couple of hours doing gardening. It is a chance to switch off and be at one with nature.

I am so glad to read that OP. I have just started ours. We moved, and have a fairly large area that was nothing except grass and an apple tree. So we planted a hedge, moved a path, planted a few shrubs. I am no gardener but am willing to try!
Glad to have your success and delighted to have a “reason” to go outside!

I looked around and it is beautiful.
One day you will look around and ... your babies will be all grown up and gone. Enjoy nurturing them and the garden; live in the moment. There is so much joy to be found in raising little ones, giving them the best start, finding the right place for them that suits their individual needs and temperament.
I'm so pleased that you have been bitten by the gardening bug. As you have discovered, it is very therapeutic and rewarding. I keep trying to encourage my DD but she's not having it. I'll have to wait for grandchildren to show her the way.

Thank you, I’ve had so much pleasure reading your post. As others have said gardening is so therapeutic and gives such joy.
The sense of achievement in making the environment beautiful for humans and wildlife is a wonderful thing.
I hope you and your family continue to enjoy your garden for many years

Love this. I've also been sorting our garden since lockdown and totally understand the joy you are feeling.

I find it so exciting when things start to flower and it just gives me a real sense of calm being out there.

Such a lovely post. It is so therapeutic and I am really pleased to see green prescribing happening in recognition of it.

We’re house hunting today as my little ones are getting big and starting to go their own way. Garden is top of my wish list, don’t care what the house is like !

Gardening beats 15-hour days in the office hands down!

I find it so therapeutic as well-I wish I’d started when my kids were little, but hey ho.

This year I’ve started taking a photo of the garden each month to show me what’s where, where there are gaps, where bulbs might look good and to help me plan ahead-that’s lovely, too!

What a lovely post.

I still work long hours in the office but my garden - that thanks to covid I stare at all day long - has become such a source of joy. Watching something thrive from nothing is amazing.

It is wonderful isn't it, OP?
We had a tip of a garden for years. Life just got in the way of my desire to turn it into something glorious. We did bits and bobs, here and there. But I never had the time to sink my teeth into the garden. And then in March of 2020, my life changed. I was out on a dog walk and my artery literally tore. It's a really rare thing. It ripped, causing a skin flap that blocked the artery, caused a heart attack and sent me into cardiac arrest. Totally random. Totally unexpected. Timing, people who saw me collapsed on the pavement, swift paramedics who got me to A&E just I arrested, just everything lining up, all saved my life.
It was and remains a bit of a trauma that I'm working through. ANYWAY, I am turning this into a me thing.
The best thing to happen to me was to tuck into my garden. I couldn't do much initially, post-heart attack/cardiac arrest, so the garden became my oasis. It's where, over the summer months, I became physically stronger, mentally stronger... and to have come close to death only to come back into the world by a thread of luck made watching things grow one of the most healing therapies ever. My garden is like a jungle this summer. All the fruits of last summer's labour have come into full glory this year and it's just extraordinary and yes, life-affirming.
It's real soul mining, gardening is. You dig deep into the earth, you dig deep into the soul.
One day, you'll be standing there with your secondary schoolers for children, OP, and surrounded by all of the glory you started with them years earlier in that little patch of heaven on earth that is yours, your garden.
for a grower of them.

Lovely post. I have a small garden, one of the only remaining front gardens round here as all others have been concreted for cars. But it looks so beautiful after years of hit and miss planting. Gardening is really rewarding.

What you've done sounds wonderful! I'm also a novice gardener with a young child. We made a border together last year and have enjoyed watching it grow. We're seeing loads of butterflies in our garden at the moment too which is fantastic! A friend told me that if you involve your children in gardening then you are growing little gardeners! I love that idea!

Oh vanguard

Gardening is great. The problem is that it’s largely for the rich. You have to own a house to begin with, and it has to have a garden. I was 35 before I had my own garden. Yes I know there are allotments but many areas have waiting lists of 10-20 years, there just aren’t enough plots for people who want them.

This is a lovely post OP, I'm so glad that you are enjoying your garden. I am a terrible gardener but I love our suburban patch. It's big for a semi and long and was very established when we moved in. The thing I love about gardening is that if you make a mistake one year you can try again the next. And plants don't need to cost a fortune, buy smaller and wait for them to grow, much more fun than an instant garden.

Thank you all so much, I'm so glad you understand.

Vanguard thank you for sharing, what an amazing journey, I wish you happiness.

We are not rich, I was legal aid rural area, we rent the farm, huge rent. We live a very frugal life, but kids are out all day and happy.

I have some chickens, another happy spot.

It was such a huge project I honestly never thought I would get there. I weeded one end and by the time i got even half way the first bit needed done again!

I'm sure there are still many weeds but they are pretty ones

Oh this is so lovely to read! I've really got i to gardening over the last few years too - I adore the planning, the anticipation, seeing it all come to fruition. At this time of year just being out in the garden, looking at what's flowering or about to come into flower and soaking it all in gives me so much joy.

Thanks for sharing such a lovely post!

This is so lovely. I am a total novice who has started this year too. I live in Yorkshire in a stone terrace and we have a little back yard. We now have huge tomato plants, sugarsnap peas and lots of pots of flowers I've grown from seed. I have learnt so much and also find it really therapeutic. I love going out every day to water the flowers and check on their progress!

How lovely xx

It is like a bug!

I now wander round on our walks thinking oh I could plant something in that! I have claimed a broken digger bucket, troughs, and a tyre.

Today we are going to make a sort of water wall with old gutter pipes.

Lovely post and hello fellow gardeners!
I'm in Australia, it's winter, I just spent two hours mulching with pea straw and. putting the garden to bed" until Spring. I'm thinking all the time what I'll plant next, admiring the winter bulbs and camellias, making a mental note to buy asparagus and rhubarb plants for some big pots I own.
Gardening is so therapeutic, creative, I get exercise, enjoy the seasons and the fresh air. I'm obsessed with it.

My garden is my sanctuary too.
It sounds as though you've discovered your peace in nature. Well done for tackling such a large garden.

Years ago we had a rambling old 1920's house in an acre of gardens and it was just too much for me. I used to sit in the mower for three hours every few weeks and that was all I could muster up.

We moved to a much smaller house with a normal sized garden (about 1/10th of acre) and it's become my salvation. It's manageable, I can do an hour and see the difference.

I've discovered that the old lady who created the garden in the 1950's loved roses and I found a climbing rose in the undergrowth. I put a bag of fertiliser on it as it looked sad and oh my goodness the blooms are fabulous!

I am loving pottering amongst foliage and flowers

Lovely OP 🥰

I’ve too discovered the joy in gardening from wfh and lockdown.

I’ve got from seed plants in my garden now and seem to nurture and love them like small children. I erected a copper ‘fence’ around my seed grown lupin babies, and a few weeks ago a singular slug got through the barricade and destroyed a batch of them in one night. I felt bereft 😂

....and the hatred of slugs is disproportionately high now and I’m shocked at how evil my thoughts are in coming up with all sorts of evil methods to eliminate them entirely.

Lovely post OP.

I find gardening is the only thing that distracts me from my anxiety and unhelpful chatter in my head. I know some people use exercise or meditation but they don't work for me. I love popping out to see whats changed since I was last out.