How to garden when you don't feel like gardening

Three tips for the apathetic and uninspired

I am so sick of cooking!! Which is the stupidest thing to say because for at least the last week (excluding one hastily blended batch of pesto last night) I have cooked absolutely nothing. My husband has been stoically, resolutely, determinedly finishing our kitchen renovation that never seems to allow itself to end, and my legend of a mother has been dropping us off meals for the last five days running. My dad has also been feeding me lunch most days (he makes caprese rolls - crispy French bread filled with tomato, basil, giant, thick slices of fresh bocconcini and drowned in tobacco sauce. It’s so good.)

If I’m honest, since our son was born two years ago, the frequency of my cooking attempts has plummeted faster than a SpaceX rocket, albeit with slightly less flaming debris.

And still, today at least, and without adequate reason or excuse, I am so sick of cooking.

I think it’s not actually the cooking I’m sick of. I’m sick of thinking about food. I just want to buy a big box full of Soylent green (a product featured in a 1970s dystopian film where the only thing people ate was this homogenous blended thick shake - a substance eerily reminiscent of all the weird-ass protein powders everyone now seems to drink). I want my box of Soylent and I don’t want to think anymore. And it seems a lot of people feel the same because I have recently discovered another Substack account called ‘What to cook when you don’t feel like cooking’ that has a whopping 477 000 subscribers, who probably also feel like buying a few boxes of Soylent, and maybe some sedatives. And the real shame of the matter is, I love cooking!! I LOVE cooking. I’ve written three cookbooks! I’m just… tired. And uninspired. But mostly tired.

Anyway, this isn’t a cooking Substack. I’ll get to the point.

Even when you love something, sometimes you just get sick of it. Sometimes life is exhausting, or something bad happens, or you get a runny nose and you’re just not *feeling it*. Life is filled with days when you can’t be arsed exercising, or cooking, or taking the high road, or replying to your accountant… Or gardening.

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Some wild and untamed autumnal wilderness.

The problem with all the things we routinely get sick of is they can only be ignored for so long before your garden turns to a wild shambles, your accountant gets pissy with you and all the Soylent Green you’ve been drinking gives you scurvy. At some point it becomes better to just send the email, water your wilting lettuces and cook yourself something that contains some vegetable matter. At these times, you need an easy inroad. You need a recipe that doesn’t make you feel tired just looking at it. A way to rekindle a little bit of excitement and enthusiasm. Or at least a way to trick yourself into doing what needs to be done without hating it.

As always, I am writing the newsletter I need to read. Not only am I not cooking, I’m not really gardening. The last thing that inspired me in the garden was the sweet pea teepee I’ve been making with our little boy. But at 36 weeks pregnant I have to admit that my remaining motivation to do anything apart from sitting on the couch has pretty much evaporated.

I want to lie around and knit. I want the garden to take care of itself for a bit, while everyone takes care of me and my parents bring me food to eat as I lie uncomfortably on our playroom floor making tiny lego cars with my toddler and trying not to fall asleep. I have well and truly entered the apathetic stage of this pregnancy. And my current mental state is entirely responsible for today’s newsletter topic:

How to garden when you don’t feel like gardening

1 - Just don’t.

If you don’t feel like gardening, my first piece of advice is: don’t garden!

I don’t mean give up forever, but developing a gardening habit is a bit like trying to make a toddler eat. If there is too much pressure to do it, it’s just never going to happen. You’ll rebel against yourself - gardening will begin to feel like work, and you’ll never genuinely want to do it.

Garden’s aren’t meant to be work! I’m aghast at how our society has managed to turn gardening into something that people freak out about, and critique themselves over. Gardening can - and should - be something you do for the pure joy of doing it, not because you are seeking some kind of end-goal.

Stylist Alison Bornstein says that fashion is a great thing to play around with because it is so low stakes. She says we worry too much about how we dress, thinking that anyone else gives a shit, and we should instead just play, be creative, experiment, find the fun. The same is true in the garden. The only person who cares if you have a crappy, wild garden is you.

The very fact that gardening is such a low-stakes enterprise should inspire us, rather than deter us. It means you can plant whatever you like, wherever you like. It means you don’t actually need to stress out about aphids, you don’t have to keep a pristine yard, you don’t have to keep up with the Joneses (the Joneses always have dull modern gardens anyway), and you certainly don’t have to garden if you don’t feel like it.

Give yourself a little break, cut yourself some slack, and you’ll be surprised at how quickly the desire to get back out there bubbles to the surface once again.

Flanders poppies, nasturtiums and a lettuce about to bloom, from two springs ago.