What children can teach us about our gardens

7 ways that having a toddler might just make you a better, wiser gardener.

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It’s a funny thing, having a child. I tried so hard for such a long time to prove it hadn’t fundamentally altered me. I was scared, I guess, of not recognising myself - of losing the things I loved, of feeling like a stranger with foreign interests, new drives and weird ideas.

For quite some time I was adamant that motherhood was not going to change me, slow me down, derail my plans. I sent work emails mid-way through labour, right before heading to hospital, and I thought ‘Ha! See! I can keep it together even now, nothing is going to throw me off course’. Except of course, it’s not actually very pleasant trying to send work emails in between contractions, and it’s not really very pleasant doggedly insisting on being the person you thought you were, when every piece of your life has fundamentally rearranged itself. For a year or more after our son was born, I felt like I was ploughing headlong into a strong wind, leaning into it, battling with it, pushing relentlessly against it. Determined not to let it shift the path I was so sure I needed to be on.

But all that happens when you push into an endless wind is, eventually, you get very, very tired.

I think we spend so much of our lives walking into the wrong winds. Battling with ideas about who we think we should be, what we think we should be doing. Making life so much harder in our refusal to simply change direction, scared to reorient ourselves because sure, it might be easier walking with the wind behind you, but it’s terrifying not knowing where you’re going.

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Notes:

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• It’s a list of the ways that children can help us to become better gardeners. Turns out they are small but surprisingly wise little humans. If you’re struggling to work out how to keep your love of gardening afloat with young kids in the mix, I hope it helps you.

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I’ve heard women talk about motherhood ‘softening’ them, and I always used to hate that idea. I didn’t want to be soft. I wanted to be like Sarah Connor in the Terminator movies. Sinewy and tough. But I think I misunderstood what these people meant. I thought softness was weakness - inactivity, acquiescing to others, giving up the fight. But it’s not that, is it? The fights I find myself increasingly giving up on are all internal ones based on ideas about who I should be, how productive I should be, what I should do with my time, what I deserve to do with my time.

Maybe all metamorphoses are a little bit painful, but I think abandoning those particular fights might just be making me stronger, in ways I hadn’t expected. Getting - incrementally - better at asking for what I need. Turning down opportunities when there isn’t time, without the fear they’ll never come again. Practicing, little by little (it’s very hard) to stop rushing. To kneel down on the footpath and smell the daisies my son hands me. To accept that this period of my life is going to be very different to the ones that came before. And that I am different. And that that’s not actually a terrible thing.

So many of the ideas we are told about parenting are about not letting it change us. About clever workarounds that will enable us to keep having it all and being it all and doing it all. Well, for me at least, that has proven impossible.

And the thing I am starting to realise is, if you let the changing winds blow you off course, if you let them shift you and alter you, you might end up quite liking the new path you’re on, anyway.

This is true in our gardens, too. If you are in the throes of early parenthood, you’ve probably noticed one undeniable truth: it’s very hard to maintain a pristine garden with young children.

I mean, you could try. But much like my early misguided experiments in forcibly trying not to let motherhood change me, if you try to not let having kids change the way you garden, you’ll probably wind up tired, irritated, and missing out on the infinite joy that is to be found in sharing your garden with the little people in your life.

So, in honour of our son, and all that he has already taught me about being a little bit slower, a little bit kinder and generally spending more of my life on things that actually matter, here are 7 things that children have to teach us about our gardens. For they are wiser than their years and mysteriously adept at finding the comfiest patches of grass to laze on.

Wilder is always better

Did you fall in love with any gardens as a kid? I fell in love with several. None of them were neat. The gardens children fall in love with are - almost always - wild, secretive, mysterious, rambling and full. But we grow up and somehow we forget this. And we forget to allow ourselves to feel wonder at the wild patches of our own gardens, convinced that we have some responsibility to keep them neatly trimmed, contained and predictable.

Forget about that. Especially if you don’t have time to keep your garden neat anyway. Wild gardens harbour so much more life. They are more complex and interesting spaces, usually with a wider diversity of plants and native animals. Yes, your rambling, haphazard backyard might not grace the cover of Country Style magazine but have you seen any copies of Country Style lately?? Because I’m pretty sure all their covers are SEVERELY photoshopped.

It’s either photoshop or large-scale taxidermy.

No one worth knowing gives a shit if you didn’t prune your roses