Garden With Ernest

Gardening should simply be a healthy, stress free activity.

I want to enjoy being in my garden, I want to be able to relax in it.

I do not want to be obsessing about how tidy it is.

Nor do I want to be poisoning bugs, or buying in fertilizers.  

Or worrying about what the neighbours think of it.

I want it to be low-maintenance, productive, environmentally friendly and low-cost.  

And I believe a garden can be all of these things and more. Healthy, stress free gardening happends when we work with nature, rather than against it.

Being in the garden is good for our mental health.

Gardening can lower stress levels, lighten mood and ease anxiety, but not if you are fretting, and fussing about it.

Why is it that so many people spend so much time slaving in the garden? Trimming, mowing, weeding and eradicating everything that we judge to be untidy and ugly? So much energy is put into this pointless, relentless, obsession of tidying the garden, just to make it pretty. But give any garden a week to itself and it will try and break free of your borders and liberate itself from the charming, constraints that you have placed upon it.

Gardens bloom on mess and muck

Too much tidying is harming our gardens and the environment. We need to relax our grip on the garden and learn to love tidy a little less, and see that there is real beauty in a little mess.

We annihilate wild flowers, eliminate autumn leaves, expel anything that is rotting or decaying and eradicate anything that crawls or creeps in to our gardens. Unless it is regarded as beautiful or useful.

I don’t believe this is healthy for us or our environment.

A healthy, stress free garden is organic, not artificial.

Why are we so intent on destroying our own native flora and fauna, of plucking out every weed? What are we afraid off?  

Our physical and mental health is intrinsically connected with the earth, it provides us with air, water and food. Yet we are stripping the Earth’s of it’s fertility. And this is not just happening else where, in some far off land. Because it is not just tropical rain forests that are being destroyed every minute. This is not someone else’s problem.

For example, millions of front gardens in the UK now have no plants growing in them. It is estimated that four and a half million front gardens are completely paved over.

And according to the Society of Garden Designers, “One in ten households in the UK have replaced their garden’s natural lawn with artificial grass, with devastating effects on both the environment and biodiversity.”  

And there is evidence to suggest that biodiversity improves our health and well-being.  

We need healthy biodiversity

So biodiversity is not just important for the health of our plant, it is also essential for our health and well-being too.   

We are living in a stress fuelled world. There seems to be a crises on ever corner. And we need to find ways of managing that strain. And I believe the plight of our planet is connected and entwined with our own anxiety.   

Spending time in nature reduces stress

A lot of people have lost connection with the natural world, and some people just see nature as a nuisance, some thing to be contained and controlled.

Generations of people are growing up in a sanitized world, they have lost their connection with nature, lost touch with what’s naturally normal. I think trying to keep a garden perfectly clean and tidy is stressful. Furthermore, a tidy garden does not necessarily mean a healthy, garden.

I think a lot of people have a weed phobia, an insect aversion, a fungus fear, and a dread of death and decay in their garden. But these are exactly what we need in a healthy environment.

We need to nurture nature

We need to embrace all aspects of the natural world, and leave room in our gardens for nature to do it’s thing.   

Slug feast or slugfest?

However, if you give them rotting leaves, in the form of mulch, they will eat that too. And if you have an assortment of plants and wild flowers mixed together, as you would in a polyculture garden, the slugs will have a choice. Therefore some of your plants will survive.

Also beetles and centipedes live under damp leaves and they feed on slugs, helping to keep there numbers under control.

Additionally, if you leave small heaps of dead leaves and twigs , hedgehogs can make their homes there. And they really enjoy eating slugs and snails. Nature has a balance, we can learn from that.

“Come forth into the light of things. Let nature be your teacher”  William Wordsworth.

Your garden is on the front line.

Your garden is a pitch, where a contest is being played out. It’s a battle ground of life and death, a place where little lives are being won and lost everyday. Right under our noses, right under our feet. Not many of those little lives can survive on a pristine lawn, none can survive on a plastic lawn.

Tip from Ernest: About 90% of common garden insects are pollinators or preying on other insects, so that means only 10% are actually trying to eat your plants.

Stress free, healthy lazy lawns = easy gardening

I have not cut my grass since Spring. Some would say it is scruffy, messy, weedy. But I would say, it’s buzzing with life. I have saved myself hours of work, just by doing nothing. I have saved money on petrol, and polluted a little less of our air. More insects have appeared, and feed and live in my garden. There are more bees, more butterflies, dragonflies, lacewings and ladybirds.

I am lucky enough to have toads, frogs, newts, salamanders, slow-worms, bats and many species of birds coming into my garden, all of these have befitted from the diverse range of wild plants that have grown. These plants that just appear and grow naturally are the life suport system in our local enviroment. And I have enjoyed watching and observing these little beings going about there business. indeed, it has given me a great sense of well-being and contentment. This kind of gardening is almost free of stress and my garden is healthy. And all because I did nothing.

Tip from Ernest: We will cut the grass in Autunm, or whenever it gets too topsy-turvy. But we do not cut it all at once. We cut it in strips, circles or wide pathways. This means that there is always a mixture of long and short grasses and wild plants. Perfect for mini beasts and little paws.

Healthy stress free gardening is mindful gardening

Therefore we have the power to loosen our control, to stop tidying things out of existence. There is a show, a spectacle to been seen, out in our gardens. This performance is not a rehearsal, it is a matter of life and death. And our lives, our health and well being are linked in this intricate network. Since we are a part of the natural world, and should not try and live apart from it.

That does not mean we can just sit back and do nothing. Which is why we have to watch over our gardens to ensure these essential enviroments remain fruitful. That may mean learning new skills and just being more mindfull of what we are doing. And I belive, just being more aware and more awake to our natural world improves our own well-being.