Growing Connections Through Gardening

I found being seen shabbily dressed and slinging mud around embarrassing.  At first.

My back yard is open on two sides, so neighbors have a clear view of any digging or weeding I joyfully undertake. Rather than judge me for being covered with yard muck, I’ve found my neighbors accept me at my most authentic. It started with gardening.

From March to November, as soon as I can escape the fluorescent-lit, telephone-ring-filled office, I shed the uniform of the professional working woman and change into my real skin: jeans born before the low-rise waist and worn to the point of rag status. My threadbare “Starsky and Hutch” T-shirt pairs nicely with it. The best accessory for this ensemble is mismatched gardening gloves caked with mud.

My intention, as I wander out to my yard, is to tend and nurture plants. As I weed and dig, relationships have taken root.

Connections begin with waves hello across the yard. In early spring, as I plant seeds in a light drizzle, I laugh when I look over and see our neighbor is out also. We laugh and acknowledge to each other that we don’t know when to come in from the rain.

In late spring, we muse while watering during a dry spell that the grass isn’t really sprouting. Another neighbor offers full sun space in her yard for me to use as a vegetable garden.

By early summer, we picnic together. We’ve come to know each others’ friends and family. Seed, water, sun; and our homes have  grown beyond the brick into our yards, and our definition of family has spread across property lines.

It’s tough getting to know neighbors. We often don’t have the opportunity, entrenched in our busy lives, to bridge the gap between homes. Our section of the block seems to have stumbled onto the romantic notion of the 1950s, when people dropped in on each other for coffee and children wandered from one yard to the next under the watchful eye of one adult or the other. In our neighborhood, the adult is inevitably gardening.

We must not be alone in this scenario in central Pennsylvania. A local garden center held an annual yard sale last weekend.
Multi-age crowds dived on carts, competing for bargain perennial plants.

I felt silly joining in, but certainly felt like one of many. Marketing statistics show an upward trend in outdoor-living spending, and local garden centers find similar results. Kathy Quarles, manager of County Market Nursery in Upper Allen Twp., notes that not only are large numbers of people enjoying gardening, but an increasing number of them are younger.

“People are really enjoying spending time in their backyards and are taking extra measures to beautify those spaces,” she said.

My neighbors garden as passionately as I do. In fact, everyone in my social circle gardens. We share tips, and we share plants. I have lovely coneflowers from Grace, lillies of the valley from Barb, iris from Deuce, ferns from Julie. Each time I admire the coneflowers, I think of Grace. Connections to people manifested in subtle purple petals arching gently.

Plant-sharing creates the vision of a senior citizens’ gardening club. I’m greeting my 40s, but almost everyone around me is younger. The idea that a young person would view gardening as a chore doesn’t ring true to me.

Gardening is a gift. The obvious benefits are many. There is a meditative aspect in escaping the noise, forcing yourself to slow down and clear your head while weeding the moss garden. Sharing with your children the cycle of life as they help you sow seeds, watch the plants develop, harvest and consume the produce. Intrinsically, gardening is creating beauty and enriching your surroundings. The surprise is that your emotional and social life is enriched as well.

The neighbors, like my immediate family, probably picture me best with shovel in hand and with a swath of significant dirt somewhere. My essence is best expressed when I am stripped of pretense –melted makeup, wearing jeans — exercising creativity and enjoying my family.

My neighbors and I started waving hello across the lawn a little more than a year ago. Last weekend, we cut into a hedge originally grown for privacy and installed an arbor to hold open a doorway between our yards close to our homes.

Our friendship has taken root.