Gardening and (in) the Mind

Gardening has long been one of those things I've felt I "should" do, since I grew up doing it during early and middle childhood and gravitate toward homesteading YouTube channels now that Child is old enough to "help" me outside sometimes. However, I also don't like change, so adding that habit back in has some mental barriers.

Our house has some mulched areas and a small (untended-yet-fruitful) fenced garden. This week, I've been engaged in brush clearing, mulching, and very selective weeding. I don't pull all the weeds in the mulched areas (leaving grass and dandelions), but pick my battles against saplings, vines, buckthorn, and thistles. My gloves yet bear the memory of burdock seeds because I didn't recognize those plants until it was too late.

This week, in honor of No-Mow May, I'd like to look at gardening from a different angle, that of a metaphor connected with the mind, reading, and writing.

Gardening and Education

Common metaphors throughout the history of education have included the key-type or passport-type function of education, the children-as-blank-slates theory based on Enlightenment thinkers John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the competing children-as-gardens analogy that I drew from reading Charlotte Mason, who specifically addressed the tabula rasa error.

Charlotte Mason's Thought

Let's talk more about Charlotte. I just finished reading the Smidgen Press e-book version of Mason's Essay toward a Philosophy of Education which expounds on and repeats her basic principles. Although she has 20 principles of education, technically speaking, the most practical ones boil down to these three:

• Children are born persons. That is, they are people made to interact with other people and the world God made; they are not just blank slates or empty vessels to be stuffed with facts.
• Children are innately curious (unless this tendency is stifled), so they need to be fed knowledge deeply and widely. Many educators refer to this as the "feast of ideas."
• Narration, her core educational strategy, depends on focused, short-term attention. 
• Bonus 5/22/23: The Common Mom added a video on the rationale for using old books in classical and Charlotte Mason education because of the "soil" of the mind.

In narration, the child listens to (or reads) a passage which can be anywhere from a paragraph to a chapter. Children know at the start that this single reading is the only time they will be exposed to the material, so they pay more attention to it. Immediately afterward, they narrate or re-tell what they heard/read in their own words, orally or in writing. Consistently followed, this method allows them to remember, understand, and apply the material for months without further review. Here are two scholarly articles (second is a dissertation) that analyze her methods from a more contemporary perspective.

Other Related Thoughts

While reading Mason's work, I pondered the gardening metaphor and non-metaphor from my own perspective as well. Drawing from my own educational experiences and her method, the first thought was about nature study. I wrote a post incorporating this the other week--even if you're not doing nature study per her method, now is in most geographic regions a great time to read outdoors! If you are wanting to garden at the same time, consider an audiobook or twist someone's arm to read aloud to you.

On a homeschooling topic, there are several other applications and connections. Children, as "born persons" per Mason, can also be compared to gardens, fertile soil, or young plants, depending on what literary sources and Bible passages you're looking at. Like plants in soil within a garden, children and their minds need regular feeding, watering, and protection with developmentally-appropriate (and just-right challenging!) ideas, whole food, healthy liquids, prayer, and parental authority.

Another homeschooling application is the tendency of home educators to capitalize on real-life learning experiences. Again, this is consistent with Mason's methods. Garden-related examples include learning the names and parts of local plants (botany), practicing how to care for and keep plants alive for future consumption (agriculture), and developing responsibility for a part of the household.

Even if you're not homeschooling or planning to, I think you would agree that it's important to learn how to work with one's own hands. Social media posts complain about this on a regular basis--which can prompt a discussion on the role of school versus the role of parents versus the role of the family's support system(s) versus external parties' roles in teaching life skills to children as they grow. Gardening as a practice addresses life skills of diligence, food production, and property maintenance, to name a few.

Gardening and Mental Health

As we grow (like plants), we continue to need good physical, emotional, and cognitive nutrition. Not surprisingly, gardening can provide some of this nutrition both metaphorically and literally.

Metaphorically, at least one source (caveat: this one dives heavily into philosophy incompatible with orthodox Christianity) compares the mind to a mental garden: "You are what you choose to plant." True points in the article include:

• Attitudes influence other attitudes and behaviors.
• From a perspective of mindfulness meditation, mental "gardening" involves observing personal growth, removing weeds of bad habits, and planting flowers of good habits. Habit formation is akin to a season of gardening for plant growth.

A more biblical metaphor is of fertile soil. The reference that comes first to mind is the parable of the sower, where the soil refers to listeners' hearts (or inner selves).

Literally, gardening can improve one's mental health. A WebMD article states that gardening improves mood (via focus on the task at hand), self-esteem (if plants turn out healthy), attention span (via focus on the task at hand), physical fitness (if one observes proper form that won't injure), and social bonds (if one gardens communally). Hazards of gardening, which no medical article would see fit to omit, include poor plant growth and illness/injury risk. Growing plants indoors confers some of the benefits with minimal risks.

If you'd rather read a book on literal gardening and mental health, Sue Stuart-Smith explores this from a psychiatric perspective in The Well-Gardened Mind. I haven't read it, but it looks interesting.

Gardening and Theology/Philosophy

Now we get into the weeds (pun intended)! Honestly, I won't get terribly deep in this post, but will try to update it with cross-links as I continue to write.

No blog post on a reading/writing blog would be complete without a book list. I haven't read any of these, but the titles sound interesting, as far as recent works on the connections among gardening, theology, and philosophy.

• Homemaking guides, usually including growing at least some of one's own food. Revision of an 1800s book all the way to a recent book connecting theology to the homemaker's role or vocation
• Roman Catholic perspective on 100 plants related to Christian traditions and how to grow them
• Outdoorsy meditation on the theology of the Incarnation, with the metaphor of roots (John 15). Another meditation on gardening as a life-cycle metaphor as well as a spiritual practice.
• The list wouldn't be complete without a book connecting philosophy to gardening. How does gardening relate to philosophy? In order to have a good growing season the first time around, one needs to imagine the future conditions and needs, spend time thinking about one's actions, and do some preliminary research into what others have done before. The author calls philosophers-who-garden existentialist stoic quantum scientists. Chew on that for a while!

To wrap up the post, here is an unedited comment on a YouTube short video I watched recently. The video, from Coffee and Bible Time, was about resources for reading through a book of the Bible.

"Good that you read on your own....but you have the spirit...you dont need commentary or otherd to tell you what it is saying...the spirit himself will teach you all things. You have been anointed by the holy one and need no man to teach you. For he will bring to rememberance all things he has said. Just listen on your own and be amazed, restored, and healed. He had you in mind when he wrote it. ;)"

Here are my thoughts on that comment:

• Correct observation that each Christian does have the Holy Spirit indwelling
• Blanket assumption of the perspicuity of Scripture. A more correct statement would be that the portions of Scripture necessary to our salvation (i.e., those proclaiming the gospel aka the lordship of Jesus Christ) are clear and that the other parts require additional context (the legwork of past generations of devout scholars and historians) to clarify.
• Incorrect formulation of the priesthood-of-believers/solo-scriptura concepts. As shown by other passages (because Scripture interprets scripture, as this commenter would likely grant), that's not what this text is saying. Plus, the earliest generations of Christians (the Church Fathers) repeatedly stressed the need for believers in congregations everywhere to submit to their bishops in theological matters.
• Scripture was written for us, not to us.
• God didn't dictate the majority of Scripture. Bible books had two authors--human and divine. Inspiration isn't a simplistic doctrine, and evangelism and apologetics suffer if we assume that it is.

Happy gardening!