How has your relationship with plants transformed over your life? It's interesting looking back on your garden adventures as essentially mirrors of 'developmental life stages' and reflect on that. What was your first garden memory? Where were you at in your life then? How has that landscape shifted with you? Love to hear your plant memoirs.
My plant journey has been very fragmented and all over the place but to look in retrospect, there is some clarity and cohesiveness to the journey.
Seeds in Darkness
The Medicinal Plants called to me at a time when I was super super ill, struggling with all sanity, disconnected from any healthy aspects of self and struggling with the will to even want to try to live. They became tiny lifelines of hope beyond the self, reasons to begin to care. Even when personal growth felt stagnant, one had the opportunity to see a seed burst to life and a garden grow sometimes even a simple garden to water can literally stop you killing yourself. I moved from being unable to even grow a plant to slowly growing lots
My interest in the garden started off from a very (pathologically) heavy reductionist perspective of "What is the chemical constituent in this plant?" "What is it's pharmacological properties" etc which I found to be eventually very limiting and to reinforce constraints of relating through "pathology" and "fixing". It's an exploitative power dynamic of "What can the plant do for me" and after awhile I felt a very limited way of relating to plants.
Seedlings of Gradual Growth
Growing to appreciate connection via growing food came later as I was starting to want to be healthier. Gradually I moved beyond a fixed rigid interest in medicinal plants to consider more in the way of day-to-day functionality and health - food as medicine. I started various patches with plants, got into sprouts in a big way etc, exploring their potentials as I grew with them. I did some foraging of local weeds and felt new dimensions of connection to the land. I started to see there was a strong sense of healing connection through growing food. A solid foundation of ground-up nurturing and healing could be had through that connection to food. A sense of connection to the surrounds and a sense of common humanity that could be built. I started to appreciate a dimension of freely sharing plants more
Blossoming
A spiritual and aesthetic layer to the garden slowly started to develop. I saw things like beauty in Nature, appreciated the roses, tried my hand at Trees for Life, even a reflective water lily pond. I saw the garden beyond consumption to appreciate a new level of relationship.
As the relationship with plants deepened, it shifted from a purely consumptive relationship and slowly plants started to become friends and company in lonely days. The garden continued to grow in new directions, with various success and challenges. A reciprocal bond of nurturing plants and receiving their multidimensional gifts became a source of healing connection Plants became loving entities and friendly allies.
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