What gardening taught me about getting it done

The over-riding lesson gardening has taught me is that you can’t do everything, especially when you know nothing. This is true of every project.

For myself, I put it in terms of writing because that is what I do.

Here are a few other lessons I’ve taken from gardening:

• It’s one thing to read (or watch), it’s another to retain
• As important as reading (or watching) is, it’s the doing where we really learn
• Start small and build from there (aka, simplify)

A seacoast of gardens

A few years ago I moved into a house that had been empty for about a year. The landscape had fallen into some disrepair as a consequence. Prior to that, a family had lived here for about two or three years and had done rudimentary maintenance to the front and backyards.

Prior to that family, another family had lived in the house for most of its existence. The house is roughly 55 to 60 years old. So they were here a pretty long time. What is relevant about that family is that the husband and wife were both gardeners – and in a big way.

It is a large property – very large. The backyard is enormous. It is wide and it is deep. And there are gardens everywhere: along the back of the yard, along the back of the house; along the sides of the house, across the front. There is a rose garden over there; there’s a kind of vegetable garden over here. Just to the right, near that tree – that’s another garden.

They are everywhere. It is a seacoast of gardens: islands, bays, inlets, peninsulas, and archipelagos. And the amazing thing is, those people have these gardens timed. One series of flowers blooms then, as it fades, another blooms. It’s horticultural choreography.

And I know nothing about gardening. I know as much as I do about open-heart surgery.

The gardens, my gardens now, as beautiful and steadfastly choreographed as they are, have fallen into disarray due to neglect. What to do?

Use it or lose it

As often happens, you want to do it all. That is a formula for doing nothing. Where do you start? What do you do? What do you need?

When you combine the scope of the problem (the gardens) with the breadth of the knowledge base being applied to the problem (my complete ignorance), there is no way you can accomplish anything worth a damn. You have to do two things:

• Break down the problem into manageable bits, and
• Go to school

As I said above, you read, listen and watch to become informed about a topic but the real learning is in the doing. It’s only in doing something that you truly see how all that information actually applies. As far as retaining what you learn through books and videos and conversation, it is in doing that you retain best. Or so it is for me. If I’m not doing it, I forget it. Use it or lose it, so to speak.

It is the same with writing. You can read all the books, articles and blog posts in the world, attend all the classes, seminars and conferences available across the globe. But you don’t really learn about writing, you don’t get better at writing, you don’t see how all that you take in applies, unless you write.

You learn by doing

The gardens at my house are finally getting under control. It began by breaking it down and going at it one garden at a time. I actually know a few things about gardening now – I can even identify a few plants and weeds, something I could never have done before.

The interesting thing about learning is that the more you learn, the more you want to learn. I think it’s because as you learn, the more you see how much more there is and it engages you more deeply.

I am light years from being someone who can legitimately call himself a gardener, but I do know something about it now (including the fact that I actually kind of like it).

None of that would have happened had I not just gone out and done it, screwing up left and right as I went along, and learning more with each screw up.

You learn by doing. So start gardening.

Or writing.

Or building.

Or …

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