© Linda Wiggen Kraft
As a garden designer I live and breathe plants and flowers. I am fortunate to be part of a community of like minded souls who let flowers run their lives. Although those of us who are professional plant people have a grander case of floweritis, I think all gardeners let their passion for flowers and plants greatly influence their lives. Yet I often wonder why we are all so smitten.
On the surface we appear to garden for different reasons. We have flower, vegetable, herb, native, exotic and other types of gardens. Some of us garden for hours on end and others for a few minutes. Some of us spend leisurely time in the garden, others attack through hard gardening chores. I have friends who hardly get dirty as they toil, but others like me are soil magnets who live with dirt stains on clothes and skin almost all year round.
Yet despite the differences of our gardens and how we garden, we all garden for one universal reason: we feel great when we garden. We may be sweaty, dirty, broke and tired, but we feel good because we garden. The tomatoes that would cost $50 a pound if we put all the real costs into their growth, taste better than any we could have bought. The flower that blooms at our feet pulls at our heart strings, asking to be cut and brought inside. Gazing at its beauty brings us peace. The shade of the tree planted years before cools our body and our troubles, providing priceless contentment.
We cannot resist the illuminating living color, the perfect symmetry and sweet fragrance of flowers in the garden. We cannot resist the calming greens of leaf and foliage. We cannot resist the warmth of sun and dampness of rain, the flight of butterfly and bee, the sound of breeze and bird song. The irresistible beauty of a garden calls to us like a siren song luring us outside. Once we heed the call we are under its spell. And once we are in its presence we are transformed by the amazing power of the garden to make us feel joy, contentment, healing and peace.
I have a theory about why we are all so taken by this somewhat illogical pursuit of gardens. We are changed in body, mind and spirit by being in the presence of our gardens. We become one with our gardens. We become in tune with and in alignment with the life, beauty and power of flower, foliage and nature. This can be explained by a physical phenomenon called resonance or entrainment.
A simple physics experiment illustrates this. If there are two tuning forks of the same musical note and one has been hit and is vibrating, and the other is held up and is not vibrating it soon will begin to vibrate. The stronger energy of the first tuning fork is being sent out into the atmosphere in sound waves that hit the second tuning fork. The second tuning fork absorbs the energy from the first and also starts vibrating in the same frequency. There is an energy exchange and they become one.
The same thing happens to us when we garden. We are part of nature and are inherently the same in body, mind and spirit. Yet we somehow become out of tune. We don’t vibrate as clearly or strongly as we could. When we go into the garden and are surrounded by the beauty, peace, strength, and life of the garden we get an energy exchange from nature. We become attuned to and one with the garden. We feel the effects on all levels of our life. Our bodies are energized, our minds become clear, our hearts become more loving, and we become closer to the beauty of creation and creator. In other words we feel great when we garden.