Lessons from the Garden: Nature Takes Control
- Mara Soloway
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
By Mara Soloway, I Start Wondering Columnist
“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” — Audrey Hepburn
For years I’ve heard the four seasons described as a metaphor for a human life: spring as birth, summer as growth, autumn as slowing, winter as the end. I appreciate that evocative language, but that simplicity could use some expanding.
I’m going to take on that challenge. I’ve long been a gardener, but not the kind focused on tidy rows or magazine-worthy borders. I’ve put in a decade of patient work of building a native perennial garden near Houston and, before that, digging food gardens into Iowa soil. Those efforts have revised my understanding of time, control, beauty, and responsibility. Some of these lessons are still seedlings. Others are finally ready to be shared.
Responsibility without Control
One of the first things the garden taught me is the difference between responsibility and control. I take responsibility for creating habitat: planting native shrubs and flowers to join the trees that were already growing when I moved in, keeping bird baths and ground-level water tubs filled, refusing pesticides. These are my deliberate choices.
But control is an illusion. Strong winds still snap limbs and flatten sunflowers. Too much rain drowns plants I had high hopes for; too little leaves them struggling despite my best efforts with a hose. A possum shelters under my deck and raises her young there, regardless of whether it fits my plans (she does fit into my garden from an ecosystem point of view; I know others would shoo her away). I can respond—I can clean up, support, adapt—but I can’t command outcomes.
Gardening makes this truth unavoidable: responsibility is mine, control never will be.
Patience, Perennials, and Climate Reality
That lesson deepened as I began working with perennials. They return when they’re ready, where they choose. Some come back from roots, others from seeds scattered by wind or dropped by birds who apparently want a say in what I grow. Months of waiting and watching are required before the garden reveals itself. My expectations in late winter are often wrong. Plants I loved last year may not return at all.
Climate change adds another layer of uncertainty. The heat comes earlier every year. A wildflower I adore simply cannot survive a Houston summer. I could build a temperature-controlled greenhouse, but because this is highly unlikely, I’ve instead learned to let go and choose plants suited to a reality I didn’t create.
On days like these, I find myself thinking of the Serenity Prayer—accepting what I cannot change, summoning courage for what I can, and trying, imperfectly, to tell the difference.
Rethinking Beauty
The garden has also reshaped my sense of beauty. Some people see plants that have gone to seed as messy or ugly. Gardeners know better. Brown is a color, too. Dormancy isn’t failure or something to get beyond; it’s part of the cycle.
Right now, in late winter edging toward spring, seedlings are cropping up everywhere. I don’t know what many of them are yet. That uncertainty requires a quiet faith—trust that something meaningful is happening, even when I can’t name it.
Offering a space for life to grow means accepting surprises. Even with careful research into light and soil conditions, some plants become wildly enthusiastic about world domination. It’s their drive to reproduce and perpetuate their species. Providing habitat requires constant editing. I pull plants out regularly—often ones I like, like oxalis or wild onion, along with others I suspect don’t belong or I don’t want. I often put them in starter pots and leave them by our neighborhood mailboxes. They always disappear.
Like other aspects of my life, not everyone values the same things I do. Some garden purely for beauty and won’t see dried seed heads as anything but neglect. Some call the plants that come in early weeds, unaware their purpose is feeding bees when little else is available.
Gardening also grows a wider sense of tolerance.
Not every creature is the same. Wildlife will happen by. I don’t have deer treating my plants like a buffet, but possum, armadillos, skunks, and racoons have found their way inside the fence. Fortunately, the skunk knew I came in peace and trundled away.
You have to accept differences. One plant needs sun while another needs shade. Some think my ecosystem is messy, while some visitors say things such as, “Now this is a real garden!”
Most gardening tasks lower stress, require attention and encourage special thinking—skills that are also useful in human relationships.
A healthy garden is a balancing act—the specifics of the plants, pollinators, soil conditions, sunlight, water. Seeing how everything connects helps you appreciate cooperation rather than competition.
Learning a New Language
It has also taught me new languages. Scientific names and ecological terms, but also how to talk with neighbors, skeptics, and fellow enthusiasts. How to explain that dirt is not filth but the foundation of life itself. How to stand in line at a store with soil under my nails and a stain on my sleeve without apology.
Rethinking Advice and Letting Go
Garden encourages a reassessment of long-held assumptions. A weed is a vital pollen source; just because it is ubiquitous doesn’t mean it should be poisoned. Insects are not always enemies to be killed but participants in the ecosystem.
On a broader sense, gardening has encouraged me to rethink other inherited advice beyond the fence line. What deserves to be pulled and what should be left alone? What counts as beauty? What is worth killing, and what deserves protection? I began letting go of ideas that had governed me for years—metaphorical gates installed by others.
Decisions, Pruning, and Time
Decision-making in a garden is constant and long-range. What goes where. How tall it will be in five years. Who will compete and who will coexist. Some questions never resolve cleanly. I’ve spent years debating whether and how to prune a pecan tree, knowing any choice alters its future health.
As Paula Whyman writes in The Bad Naturalist, restoring land—or a life—requires energy, curiosity, and a willingness to live with uncertainty. And endless decision making. She wants to remove certain plants, but which season is best for that?Should she remove nonnatives if they are allopathic and will give off toxins to kill other plants? How should she handle the trees that will eventually encroach on her planned meadow?
Can those such as Whyman who work the land turn chaos into productivity? I believe we can, but only in a flawed way because we don’t control the forces involved. A trend called chaos gardening embraces the concept with beautiful, wild results. Think cottage gardening on steroids.
Pruning has followed me indoors. I’ve been letting go of possessions—clothes, objects, books—like leaves dropping in autumn. Like pruning outside, it lets in more light.
Gardening also raises questions about the future and legacy: will I be here for the harvest? Some things we plant are for ourselves. Others are for people we may never meet.
Yearning for More
I have moments, standing outside while wind sends leaves skittering on me and across the ground, when I remember that control is optional. Those same gusts might damage a plant I’ve been nurturing. Still, I choose to enjoy the movement, the sound, the fact that I’ve helped create a refuge—however temporary—for birds, insects, and animals. I want more of this.
My suburban backyard sometimes confines me. If I only had some acreage to build that greenhouse and grow plants to rewild that land and beyond…but like all good ideas, for now I’m going to let it germinate while I tend to the space I have.
James Taylor sings that the secret of life is enjoying the passage of time. The garden agrees. Life unfolds in growth and in fallow periods, both necessary, both meaningful, both with their own beauty.
Gardening isn’t just about growing plants. It teaches how to handle uncertainty, how to recognize beauty in decline, and how to believe that beauty will be with us tomorrow.
In garden speak, it comes down to this:
Stop and smell the roses.
Thank you, Mara, for your contemplation on your garden. Your column timely for so many reasons--and not just because my spring weeds are emerging. I appreciate the reminders that we all co-exist and that life is an ecosystem where our choices can have significant ripple effects. Now to go deal with those sticky weeds....