Gardening Stress

Does gardening soothe your soul, or does it make you want to hurl everything around you into the centre of the sun and scream with rage?  Because as much as we get told gardening and spending time outside is fantastic for our mental and physical health, the constant frustration it can also inspire has got to have some effect as well.

Top End Sky through my garden

We have all heard of the green thumb who can grow ANYTHING with no effort whatsoever, and conversely the black thumb who kill everything they touch, and if you are online searching for gardening or nursery advice, you have more than likely been accused of being a plant murderer more than once. But the problem is, we often don’t learn how to garden at any point in our lives, not in any meaningful way anyway. I have seen my kid go and do her gardening time at primary school, and I know it’s not really to learn about the ins and outs of growing something on a long-term basis. We teach the science of plants in the sense that they provide oxygen, they can provide food, their basic structure, and that they need water and food. But actual sustained growth and maintenance of a garden, how to plant them, make sure the soil is balanced, there is adequate nutrients, water is available, and what to do when things aren’t quite right, we don’t learn that at school. 

Like cooking, cleaning and budgeting, we are supposed to learn these things at home, but what if your parents don’t garden? What if you grew up in an apartment, or had a shared garden that was maintained by someone else? What if you grew up on a station, and gardening was never really discussed, you only ever did the ‘big stuff’ that commercial farming might involve? What if you grew up in the ‘suburbs’ in Sweden, and now you live on 20 acres in good old Noonamah? The principles help, so anything your parents or your schooling taught you is going to give you a start, but really the difference between a good garden and a nightmare is sometimes down to luck.

So what can make a difference? For me, understanding the ground I am working with was the first big learning. I grew up on this nursery, 12 acres in McMinns Lagoon, on what was once Riparian Forest, with a touch of Monsoon Vine Thicket in the wetter spots. The land was completely cleared and grazed on prior to my parents buying it, and they planted every single plant that is here today. What I learnt as a kid from my parents was two basic concepts –

1. It is a hell of a lot easier to add water than take it away – The Monsoon is a force unto itself and fighting it is generally pointless, working with it however, can result in some of the most fascinating gardening you will ever do.

2. There is no such thing as a ‘no maintenance’ garden – Set and Forget gardening is a complete and utter myth.

Does this help me giving advice to others? Let’s say it provides a backbone, but it is far from the whole story. I learnt swiftly that just like all people are different, all situations and gardens are different. They way we garden relies as much on who we are, as where we are, so it’s not the ‘black’ or ‘green’ thumb that matters, it’s the where, when, and how of the thumbs life that is most important. If you want a tropical rainforest, and you don’t have some form of automatic irrigation and travel frequently or work 60 hours a week, you are going to struggle. A formal garden for a young family with numerous sporting, school and work commitments is going to be a nightmare, and a permaculture wonderland when you are starting from scratch is hard work even when you have all the time in the world. 

The most frustrating thing for most new gardeners is the frankly wishy-washy terms we use in the industry, that don’t mean much to the average person. I have discussed ‘full sun’ before, but how about perennial or annual? I mean most of us have the idea that an annual grows for a single year, but does that mean that Turmeric is an annual because it dies down over the dry season? Or because it regenerates during buildup and is only truly dormant for 4 months, is it actually a perennial? And short-lived plants that live for 2-4 years are technically perennials, but how many of you know that your pretty little acacia ground covers often only live this long? I can hear you from here by the way ‘but they are natives, they are hardy and they don’t need anything to survive’, it’s a common refrain we hear. Along with, ‘Bugs don’t eat natives’ and ‘white ants leave native trees alone’, it really only takes a minute to realise that it makes no sense whatsoever. If our native bugs and white ants don’t eat native plants, what do they eat, and what did they eat before humans?

If natives are hardier than exotics, why the hell do we have weeds? Because I have to say, the Alternanthera dentata ‘Red Hots’ growing with the Gamba in the paddock next to us, would be a fair indication that there is something wrong with that statement. The truth is that every living creature has its preferred habitat, mine is 26-30C, mildly humid, with a chance of rain, yours might be 18, dry as a bone, and as little rain as possible. In the Top End (our part of the world), we have the following vegetation types –

• Eucalypt Open Forests and Woodlands – Sometimes referred to as savannah, this is generally trees over grassland

• Mangrove

• Monsoon Forests

• Riparian Vegetation

• Paperbark Forests

• Floodplain grasslands

Each zone will have ‘crossover’ plants, but there will be a preferred environment for all natives, just as there is with exotics. Our very human tendency to put things in boxes doesn’t mean much to plants, hence the wonderful similarities between many plants in South-East Asia, Northern Australia and South America, and the very handy term ‘pantropical’. The point I am trying to make is everything thrives when it is given the tools it requires to do so. We know this about children, and ourselves, why would our plants be any different? 

So how does this help the ‘black thumb’ gardener? It’s all about taking time to understand what you are working with, and what gardening ‘style’ suits you and your life. Don’t expect to have a thriving garden from nowhere, or to be able to defy the realities of where you live, unless you are willing and able to put the work in. Because almost anything is possible with the right tools, the square peg will go in the round hole, if you have the tools to make it fit.

However if you want to make your life simpler, and you just want something to survive, take the time to ask some questions, watch what works around you, and start with the best ground possible in your situation. For most of us, gardening is like science and magic combined, mostly because we don’t get to see the part under the ground. Once you accept that your ‘black thumb’ is usually just not knowing what elements are required to make things work, and the ‘green thumb’ is occasionally just dumb luck, your soul might just get that soothing sensation you were looking for.