Welcome to Art of the Garden

What is the Art of the Garden?

Simply put, through the act of gardening, we can expand the creative in the rest of our lives. As gardeners, through the acts of digging, weeding, fertilizing, et al., we discover aspects of ourselves and a greater understanding of the rhythms of life and our place within those rhythms.

My garden exists in a small back yard in a Central Houston neighborhood, where my ongoing challenge is to create more space to grow vegetables and native Texas plants. My approach is organic, with knowledge gained from Urban Harvest, a local organization that teaches gardening classes and promotes community gardens and farmers’ markets. Mostly, though, as a newbie gardener–just now starting my second year–I am in a constant crash course. The garden doesn’t wait for me to learn, so I often feel as though I’m playing catch-up while it does what it does. In spite of my mistakes, it thrives.

I assumed I would enjoy gardening. I did not know how much passion I would develop for it, though, or how working in the garden would inform my primary avocation, that of writer. When I work in the garden, I learn about myself, about life and death, about writing, about who I am in this world. Periodically, between novel drafts, I jot down my thoughts and feelings about life as a gardener, and I have started this blog in order to share those musings.

Here’s a little bio of me: I grew up in Central Illinois and moved to Texas in 1981. For many years I was a writer who didn’t write, which is a sad way to live! In 1997, after a long illness reminded me that life is short and fragile, I found The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and have been writing ever since. In 1999 I wrote and published When a Grandchild Dies: What to Do, What to Say, How to Cope, and that same year I edited Georgie Holbrook’s Joy-Full Holistic Remedies: How to Experience Your Natural Ability to Heal. Last year I edited and published Patchwork and Ornament: A Woman’s Journey of Life, Love, and Art by Jeanette Feldman. Currently, I am revising two novels and seeking traditional publishers for them.

Although new to gardening, I come from a long line of farmers, ending with my paternal grandparents. They left the farm long before I was born and divorced. I never even knew my grandfather. And yet, their DNA lives within me and guides me. All I know is, when I am in the garden, I am more alive. My life is more a work of art. Hence, the art of the garden. In the posts that follow, we will go there, both into the garden and into life. I look forward to sharing the journey with all of you.