• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Home Garden Companion

Home Garden Companion

Ilona's Garden Journal

  • Plant Library On The Journal
    • All Season Garden Color
    • Sitemap
  • Garden chores
    • Essential Garden Tools For Beginners
    • Garden Tips and Advice
  • Ilona’s Garden Home
    • Old House Blog
    • Garden Librarian
  • Ilona’s Garden Flavor Shop
  • Privacy Policy

Characteristics of a Gardener

18.04.16 | Ilona Erwin | No Comments

We aren’t born gardeners, though many of us are born into a gardening tradition. I was thinking over some of the lessons of a garden, and realized if one pursues growing things as an avocation or a career there are certain qualities developed over time.

While no guarantee that a person will apply them in all aspects of life, the repetition of the lectures of nature make the lessons clear. Anyone diligent as a gardener will tend to develop some recognizable characteristics.

A Sense of Time Tuned to Nature

What is it that divides the punctual from the tardy? I have belonged in the latter group all my life, though I have struggled mightily to conform myself to schedules, appointments and all the paraphernalia of the dutiful. Yet it is I, not my punctual husband, that understands the truth in “make hay while the sun shines”.

Gardeners come to understand the times, the seasons of sowing and reaping, “a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted”, and how fleeting the opportunities may be for many things in life.

In our scheduled, sanitized, climatized, and otherwise engineered lives that bend, block, or bulldoze nature, there is a forgetfulness of this sense of timing that is rooted in natural processes. Gardeners become aware, and attuned to it by default.

Patience

Not all gardeners are patient people, and some might be more impatient than others, but along the way... from when that child first digs up a seed to “see if it’s grown yet” to when the old gardener plants a tree he will never see reach its maturity… there is a steady acquisition of this character quality. Nature teaches us patience.

Some of Nature’s schooling in patience is gentle. Waiting through a long winter, observing germination rates and conditions, looking for harvest after a season of weeding, watering, and feeding.

Other lessons are hard and bitter, but the gardener lives through them to plant another day, another season, and learns a little more of patience and its rewards.

Curiosity and Expectation

how to harvest kale
From “Playing in the Dirt” blog

People who plant things expect an outcome, although they don’t always know what that will be and sometimes receive something very different than they had in mind!

If you garden you find yourself intrigued by some of the challenges, and looking up close at nature piques one’s curiosity. This can lead to all sorts of detours of research and learning, experimenting and observation. Rabbit trails of trying new plants or using a reputed method of growing. Gardening is full of trials… of the good kind, mostly.

The expectation of a garden always seems to engender hope, as well. I think gardeners will tend, on the whole, to be hopeful people. Usually there is enough of a reward to keep one looking forward, rather than mired in regret of past seasons.

Generosity

Perhaps the nature’s abundance encourages it, but those who garden are often a generous lot. Just ask anyone who lives near the vegetable gardener who grows a large harvest of zucchini!

An age-old tradition among gardeners is that of the “pass-along-plants”. Sharing beloved or particularly vigorous growing plants with neighbors and friends, whole gardens may be made of such generosity. The regenerative powers of plants create the need to give away the excess.

We lift and divide, we gather up seed, we propagate and generate more plants than we know what to do with, and the result is… to passalong some of the riches of nature.

The result of generosity, whether by such accident or on purpose is to experience the joy in giving. One gains an appreciation of giving for the sake of enriching others or the enjoying the resulting smiles.

Generosity is often the byproduct of growing things.


What characteristics have you observed developing from your gardening experience? Are there lessons that have unearthed certain qualities in you or others who love the pastime of cultivating a garden?

 

 

 

Share this:

  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Related

← Previous Post
Interesting Sissinghurst Video Showing Old Fashioned Techniques
Next Post →
Garden Advice: Keep A Close Watch

About Ilona Erwin

I was a garden blog pioneer, and began writing on this blog in 2003. Before that I had begun a garden website that has been at its own domain since 2006, Ilona's Garden.

I still love writing, gardening, and art after all these years, although travel and grandchildren have become a big part of my life, now.

DISCLOSURE: I may be an affiliate for products that I recommend. If you purchase those items through my links I will earn a commission. You will not pay more when buying a product through my link. Thank you, in advance for your support! Privacy Policy

Primary Sidebar

Oh, hi there!

I was a garden blog pioneer, and began writing on this blog in 2003. Before that I had begun a garden website that has been at its own domain since 2006, Ilona's Garden.

I still love writing, gardening, and art after all these years, although travel and grandchildren have become a big part of my life, now.

Newest Postings Here

  • Hawaiian Flower Arrangements
  • HELLLOOOO, From The Other Side
  • February Gardening, Last of Winter in the Flower Garden
  • Compilation of Past Mini-Posts of 2003
  • Wayback in Ilona Garden Time

Visit for a Spell

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Youtube
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest

Mission

Finding your way home via the garden path

Books, Tools, Tips

Read reviews from the GardenLibarian

Portrait of a Gardener

gardener musings
Musings

What’s Wrong With Today’s Gardening?

Modern gardening
What Is Wrong?

Garden Journal

fine garden journal
Journal, Planner and Log Book
buy quality plants

You might also like

seeds

National Seed Swap Day in January

Garden advice

What Makes a Low Maintenance Garden?

Create A Child’s Garden, Grow Love For Nature

Growing Indoor Flowers In December

I Found Out About “She Sheds” And Coincidentally, About Friends

Newest Postings Here

  • Hawaiian Flower Arrangements
  • HELLLOOOO, From The Other Side
  • February Gardening, Last of Winter in the Flower Garden
  • Compilation of Past Mini-Posts of 2003
  • Wayback in Ilona Garden Time

Books, Tools, Tips

Read reviews from the GardenLibarian

Standouts

10 Useful Gardening Tips For Spring

Do You Grow Herbs? 10 Reasons To Love Them

10 Cool Season Annual Flowers To Plant

Standouts

August Gardening: Ten Suggestions

What are your ten top choices for perennial plantings?

ilonagarden

With village lights With village lights
Christmas decor #christmasspirit🎄 Christmas decor #christmasspirit🎄
Instagram post 17935013548845771 Instagram post 17935013548845771
Instagram post 17981374354427684 Instagram post 17981374354427684
Instagram post 17865517706595888 Instagram post 17865517706595888
Gift of flowers by my bedside Gift of flowers by my bedside
#mockorange #juneflowers #ohio #mockorange #juneflowers #ohio
Instagram post 18224713828022497 Instagram post 18224713828022497
Load More... Follow on Instagram

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Join Me

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Copyright © 2023 · Your Site Name

Hazel Theme by Code + Coconut

 

Loading Comments...