Hello gardeners!

Whether I like it or not, the heat of summer days has passed us by here in British Columbia. With a latte in hand, I was sitting in a sunny spot in the garden, thinking about how the summer season has rolled out this year. Which plants did exceptionally well? Why did that tree not bloom? It got me to thinking about what gardening is? There are so many different kinds of gardeners, and so many different kinds of gardens.

For some, gardening is about growing food. For others, it is harvesting fields of cut flowers. Some focus on expressing creativity through landscape design. Others enjoy connecting with the wildlife using their garden. And some of us simply want to have a place to putter on a Saturday morning.

For some of us, the garden is where we go when we need to breathe.

I have long believed that gardening can help us manage stress and anxiety. It can be a safe place to be with our feelings. There is something about being outside and working with our hands, noticing what is growing and changing, that brings us back to ourselves.

But over the past few years, I've started thinking about gardening in a bigger way.

Because while we are trying to take care of personal wellness, we are also living through the biggest environmental challenge we have ever faced: climate change.

And I began to see a connection that I hadn't fully appreciated before.

Just the words climate change seems to cause people to shut down. It is too much, too heavy, and feels like a tomorrow problem. We see wildfires, floods, drought, extreme heat and ecosystems under pressure. We read about emissions and plastics and disappearing species. We hear about the enormous changes that need to happen in energy, transportation, manufacturing, agriculture and the way we build our communities. It feels very heavy and takes the wind out of our sails.

And then we look at our own lives.

Sure, I can save a plastic container from the garbage. I can choose a reusable bag. I can turn off a light. These things are the right thing to do and of course they matter. But sometimes I find myself thinking: Is this really enough? Or why bother when big industry is not doing anything?

I understand the concept of collective efforts, but it is the heaviness of the issues that concern me. Stressed because we care, overwhelmed because the problem feels impossible, and frustrated because we want to do something but don't know how our individual efforts can possibly accomplish enough.

Feeling overwhelmed, I step into the garden or into nature.

This is where gardening changed the conversation for me. I realized I already had something powerful in my hands: my garden.

Can how I garden actually be part of the solution?

Whoa. That changes things. Suddenly, my perspective shifted and I began to wonder if the gardening tasks I do in my garden could have another dimension. Could the way I garden help heal this small patch of earth? Could a few healthy gardens strung together in a community pathway, move the needle on something as large as biodiversity? Don't get me wrong, I am not going to save the planet from my backyard. But perhaps if I reframe that question and ask could my efforts move the needle? Yes. I think how we garden could make a difference.

This is what I love about gardening. The garden gives us something tangible to work with. We can make one small change and see what happens. Notice a butterfly we didn't see before. Or a new insect crawling under a leaf canopy to escape the heat. And while we are puttering in the garden, something else can happen. We slow down. We begin to experience the enormous satisfaction of doing something that is both small and real.

Our hands are dirty. But we feel better.

Perhaps the garden can give us something we desperately need right now: a way to act without the pressure to solve the entire problem or to give up every convenience we have enjoyed.

A gardener undertaking a small job in the garden can be climate action.

And it can also be an act of caring for ourselves. That's the connection I keep coming back to. The garden can help us care for the planet while helping us care for ourselves. And maybe that is what gardening4wellness means to me.

Not gardening as another thing to get right. Having to learn all the rules and recite the Latin names of plants we have never seen. Not perfection.

Just the possibility that the ordinary tasks we do in our gardens can move the needle and create something bigger, whose full effect we may never be able to see.

So how do we do that?

That's what I want to explore.