Lessons From My Garden: A Therapist’s Reflections on Growth
This was my first year growing a garden.
I went into the spring excited to fill my garden beds with herbs, vegetables, and flowers, armed with more research than any first-time gardener probably needed. Over the months that followed, tending to my garden became one of the most grounding parts of my days. There was something unexpectedly cathartic about stepping outside, slowing down, harvesting what was ready, pulling away dying leaves, and noticing what had changed since the day before.
As a therapist, I spend a lot of time thinking about growth. I sit with people as they navigate change, uncertainty, grief, relationships, old patterns, and the frustrating reality that healing rarely moves in a straight line. Somewhere in the rhythm of tending my garden, I started recognizing many of those same themes unfolding in the dirt.
Research suggests I’m far from the first person to experience gardening this way. Studies examining gardening and horticultural activities have found positive associations with well-being, quality of life, and mental health. Other research has explored gardening as a form of stress recovery, including improvements in mood and reductions in cortisol after stressful experiences.
Now, as my first growing season begins to wind down, I’ve found myself reflecting on what these garden beds taught me about the much bigger process of growing.
Growth Requires Letting Go of Control
I approached my first garden the way I approach many new things: I researched. A lot.
I learned about planting dates, sunlight, watering, pruning, soil, pests, and all of the tiny variables that might help something thrive.
And then I discovered that plants do not particularly care about my plans.
Some things flourished exactly where I expected them to. Others struggled despite my best efforts. Seeds appeared where I had forgotten planting them. Flowers surprised me with colors I hadn’t anticipated. Things I fussed over struggled while something I had nearly given up on suddenly decided to grow.
For someone with perfectionistic tendencies, this became a surprisingly helpful practice.
Perfectionism can create the illusion that if we prepare enough, work hard enough, or anticipate every possible problem, we can protect ourselves from disappointment. The garden kept giving me opportunities to loosen that grip.
I could learn what a plant needed, create supportive conditions, and respond when something changed. Eventually, I had to let the sun, weather, soil, plant, and time do what they were going to do.
Healing, relationships, grief, career changes, and personal growth often ask the same of us. We can tend carefully and still live without guarantees.
There is humility in tending something you cannot fully control.
Growth Sometimes Looks Like Slowing Down
Gardening gave me a reason to move slowly.
There is no particularly efficient way to stand beside a garden bed and pluck dying leaves one by one. Harvesting herbs asks you to look closely. Deadheading flowers means noticing which blooms have finished and which are still opening. More than once, I walked outside intending to water quickly and found myself twenty minutes later inspecting a new bud or trimming basil.
In a life that often moves very quickly, these tiny rituals became a form of mindfulness.
Mindfulness involves intentionally bringing our attention into the present moment with curiosity. In lives filled with notifications, responsibilities, productivity, and endless opportunities to think three steps ahead, that simple attention can be surprisingly difficult.
The garden kept bringing me back into my senses: herbs left on my hands, soil beneath my fingers, warmth from the sun, the colors of the flowers, and tiny changes I could only see because I had slowed down enough to look.
Research has explored this relationship between gardening and stress regulation as well. In one study, participants who gardened for 30 minutes after completing a stressful task experienced greater reductions in cortisol and reported better mood than participants who spent the same amount of time reading indoors.
I spend a lot of my work helping people notice what is happening inside of them. The garden reminded me that attunement can begin somewhere very simple, by paying attention to what is already here.
Sometimes presence looks like sitting quietly with an emotion. Other times, it looks like standing outside, pinching basil leaves.
Growth Includes Learning to Notice What Is Good
One of my favorite things about the garden was how many tiny reasons it gave me to feel delighted.
The first vegetable appearing. A flower I had nearly given up on finally blooming. The almost ridiculous vibrancy of a zinnia. A sunflower appearing that I never intentionally planted. Walking outside in the morning and discovering something had changed overnight.
None of these were particularly significant events. They still made my day.
In nervous system work, we sometimes talk about glimmers, small moments or cues that evoke safety, connection, pleasure, or ease. Our brains are remarkably good at scanning for potential problems, and stress can narrow our attention even further.
Noticing glimmers gives us opportunities to widen that lens.
My garden became a glimmer factory. A new bloom. A bee buried in a flower. The smell of rosemary between my fingers. A handful of herbs I grew myself becoming part of dinner. Colors so vibrant they almost looked fake.
I still had emails to answer. I still had obligations to fulfill. There were still hard days. And there was also a new flower outside.
Sometimes joy arrives through milestones and celebrations. Other times, it asks us to become observant enough to catch it in much smaller forms.
Growth Happens in Seasons
When I planted my garden this spring, so much of the experience was anticipation. I put seeds and tiny seedlings into mostly empty beds and waited.
Then came the tending. Watering. Watching. Troubleshooting. Waiting some more.
Eventually, there was abundance: herbs I could barely harvest quickly enough, vegetables appearing beneath leaves, flowers opening faster than I could cut them for bouquets.
There were disappointments, too. Plants that struggled. Blooms I missed at their peak. Things that never became what I imagined when I planted them. Long stretches of tending with no guarantee that anything would come from it.
And now, for the first time, I’m watching the garden wind down.
Soon there will be fewer flowers to cut. I’ll harvest what remains, prepare what I can for winter, and eventually look out at beds that once overflowed with color and see them quiet again.
I’m surprised by how sad that makes me.
We move through seasons in our own lives, too. There are seasons of abundance and seasons of planting, when we pour care into things we cannot yet see. There are seasons of waiting, grieving, rebuilding, and resting. We don’t always get to choose which season we’re in or know how long it will last.
Watching my garden move through its full cycle has given me a tangible reminder that change is woven into growth. The empty bed in spring, the abundance of summer, and the quiet that follows all belong to the same garden.
Something can be temporary and still matter deeply.
What I’m Taking With Me
Soon, I’ll put my first garden to bed for the winter.
I’ll miss walking outside to see what changed overnight. I’ll miss gathering herbs for dinner, cutting flowers for the kitchen, and wandering outside for one task only to lose twenty minutes tending to something else.
Mostly, I think I’ll miss having this small living reminder to pay attention.
But I’ll carry the practice of tending with me.
Where am I trying to control an outcome when I can only tend to the conditions?
What small glimmers have I been moving too quickly to notice?
What season am I in right now, and what might this season be asking of me?
My first garden taught me that growth can ask us to work, wait, notice, trust, grieve, and begin again. We can care deeply for something while accepting that we cannot control every part of its becoming.
For now, I’ll let the garden rest.
And, if my plans for next year are any indication, I’ll spend the winter figuring out where to put another garden bed…or three.
If you’re considering working with a therapist in Arvada, Rocky Mountain Relational Therapy serves Denver and surrounding communities including Alta Vista Area, Arvada Plaza Area, Scenic Heights, Lamar Heights, Allendale Area, Rainbow Ridge, Club Crest, Highlands, Northwest Arvada, Wheat Ridge. The first step is to schedule a free initial consultation; that way you can get a feel for us and decide whether we’re best placed to help you. Simply visit our booking page to schedule your consultation.