Accidental Gardening for The Soul

That day in Bunnings I let my feet take me to the gardening section.

Surreptitiously I watch real-life gardeners go about their business; knowledgeable creatures hefting bags of potting mix onto laden trolleys, discussing watering systems with each other and casting experienced eyes over compost bins. They use exotic terms like ‘wetting agents’ and ‘slow-release.’ Someone says the words plant food, and I picture giant, thorny roses devouring people whole, like perfumed anacondas.

A small clump of violets whisper ‘plant killer’ as I wander past. A nearby pansy shrinks back in terror.

But then I find a punnet of mixed herbs, on special for 50 cents because they’re yellow and dead-looking. I buy them because I, like they, have nothing to lose, and in my small, awkwardly shaped backyard that I’ve always hated, just as I hate my rented flat, I plant them in an empty space between the back fence and a garden border. It’s less than twenty centimetres wide, a long strip of bare dirt that’s been empty of anything apart from a star jasmine I planted years ago and the occasional weed.

I don’t prepare the soil or anything. I just dig little holes and pop them in, as if I’m subconsciously preparing their graves. Parsley, spring onions, coriander.

The seedlings go nuts, and now, in the first days of spring, they tower proudly. People tell me to cut them back. But they look so happy, I say, pointing at the coriander, which is over a foot high. Wild stinging nettle grows amongst it all. I pick it and dry it in the sun, then toss it into slow-cooker soups along with a handful of fresh herbs.

There’s still a lot of space on either side of my accidental herb garden, so one day I plant mint for no particular reason. I pot a tomato plant and place it along a side fence because I think it will like the sun there, and the sounds of the wattle birds. I kill a strawberry plant that someone gives me and buy another, placing it on a table I found on the roadside to protect it from slugs and snails. I plant lavender in a terracotta pot.

Honeyeaters squabble in the birdbath while I do yoga next to the banks of parsley. The jasmine begins to bloom with the warming weather. I don’t know why plants are suddenly surviving under my care, much less flourishing. (With the exception of the gifted strawberry plant, of course, Groot rest its soul.) Sourgrass pops up near the spring onions, but the bright yellow flowers are so pretty I can’t bring myself to pull it out, even when I have a rental inspection due. When the manager looks over my backyard I fully expect him to say something about the weeds. We’ve never really gotten along. But today he smiles and tells me that flat-leaf parsley is the best parsley.

I no longer hate my backyard. I no longer hate my flat. A small handful of plants have grounded me. I buy a plastic chair and sit outside in the sun to eat breakfast, and lunch. To make shopping lists and jot down ideas for short stories. For plotting out novels. And sometimes I just sit. In a world that's fast losing peace, I find peace exactly where I am. Maybe it’s the sunshine, flooding into my part of the world after a long, protracted winter that makes me feel more at home. Or maybe it’s because the Out There is so scary right now.

But just as this sense of grounding occurs, something unexpected happens.

I suddenly miss my grandmother. The keen sense of absence is a physical thing; a hollowness in my body that stops me in my tracks at random moments. I find myself crying, but I'm not sure why. Its been nine years since she died.

I buy the soap she used, and breathe in its smell. The memories of her farmhouse are so real they’re almost tactile; how the water from the rainwater tank tasted, orange trees and the dichondra around the clothesline under my bare feet in summer. I want to ask her about gardening, about life. How do you make bread? Sew? Keep chickens? What is it like, growing old?

She tried to tell me things when I was younger. But the abuser in our family taught us to dismiss her. My grandmother never liked him - the man who married her only daughter who, over the years, slowly vanished inside herself, shutting out the harsh reality of her existence in exchange for fantasy. My grandmother knew more than my younger self gave her credit for, and by the time I realise my mistake, she’s fled the world.

I have a picture of her when she’s twenty; willowy and tall, all her possible lives stretched before her like the branches of a tree. I never knew this woman, and the photo makes me realise the vulnerability of life while my age makes me feel its finite quality.

I don’t know why I’m going through this sudden period of loss, of missing her so strongly. I often feel like I don’t know who am. Every single day I struggle to make sense of the world in a way that’s had many people in the past, including myself, mistake it for stupidity. When you think you’re stupid, and worthless, you don’t try. Because what’s the point? You learn to wish you were like those people in the gardening section of the hardware store. The real people, their clothes smelling faintly of weekends and mown lawns and family dinners. You learn to envy strangers.

I’ve always learnt my lessons slowly. But at last I discover that a garden won’t grow unless you actually plant something. I place seedlings in barren patches and nurture them as best I can. And when I do, things take root and grow with frightening tenacity. Life flourishes in a once-dead space, breathing and thriving where there’s light and warmth, fragile to the changing seasons but resilient.

It will grow bold and unruly, if you let it.