Discover 6 life lessons from the Not Quite a Homestead garden. From knowing your season to persevering in hard times, let these lessons encourage you on your garden journey.
The garden isn’t just full of plants. It’s also full of teachers.
A tomato plant will teach you what abundance looks like.
An empty raised bed will remind you to be patient.
And those weeds… well, they’ll keep you humble!
I’ve been in a reflective mood lately, and here are just a few of the life lessons my garden has quietly been teaching me.
To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul. —Alfred Austin
Life Lesson #1: Know What Season You’re In
It’s a hot summer day as I’m writing this, and it’s such a relief to be indoors right now.
I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to keep everything well-watered in the heat. It’s so different from the work of spring, where I’m preparing the soil and filling every nook and cranny of the garden with seedlings.
Different seasons have different focuses.
Remember what it’s like to be in the thick of planting? Ripping open a fresh pack of seeds, popping little seedlings into a raised bed. Harvesting from those baby plants is the last thing on your mind.
But you wouldn’t get upset at a seedling for not bearing fruit! It’s too young. It’s not the right time.
We have to do the right task at the right time, and not out of order.
Whether you’re planting, weeding, harvesting, or resting, each season is important in its own way.
It’s easy to forget this in real life. We compare our fresh beginnings, our seedlings, so to speak, to someone else’s long-awaited harvest and wonder why we’re “behind.”
I can get so discouraged when I’m not reaping a harvest, forgetting that I really have just planted the seeds.
Knowing your season changes everything.
It lets you focus on the right work for right now and frees you from the pressure to be somewhere you’re not.
Life Lesson #2: Just Give It Time
One of the biggest challenges for me in gardening is the waiting.
The longer I wait for a plant to grow, the more I second guess myself.
Did I put it in the right place? Is this the right color flower? Was it even the right plant to begin with?
It can also feel discouraging to look at a brand-new garden where all the plants are small and fragile. Will they ever fill out this space in my lifetime?
But over the years, I’ve learned (and accepted) that patience is, indeed, a virtue.
Six-inch hydrangea babies grow into 5-foot showstoppers.
Baby trees with pencil-thin trunks thicken, their canopies widen, and they root themselves deep into the earth.
Green tomatoes finally ripen.
And a brand-new gardener (hello!) gains confidence with every plant she puts in the ground.
Growth is happening even when you can’t see it. Growth happens even when we aren’t paying attention.
Just give it time.
Life Lesson #3: My Garden Isn’t Perfect But It Is Beautiful
You know that saying “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”? Well, that’s definitely true about gardens.
I think my garden is beautiful but I know it’s not perfect!
There are weeds.
There’s chaos and disorder.
Something is always flopping over, and I never seem to get the hardscaping done before I plant a space too full.
We have a cottage-style flower border on the west end of our backyard, and there was one summer where I gave up on weeding because I didn’t have the energy to do it.
And you know what? The garden just ended up looking lush and full because of the weeds, and the next year I had flowers blooming from seeds I had once planted and given up on.
There’s this Japanese philosophy called wabi-sabi which finds beauty in imperfection and in the passage of time. I love that outlook for something thats constantly changing, like a garden.
A garden that’s evolving and maturing is more interesting than one that’s frozen in perfection.
A space that’s truly alive will always have some imperfections. And that’s exactly what makes it beautiful.
RELATED POST: Eight things to incorporate into a garden to make it practical and beautiful.
Life Lesson #4: There’s Always Next Season
I would love to have a perfect garden. One without pests, disease, and full of perfect plants and picturesque harvests.
(I think you know where I’m going with this!)
While my garden was busy growing food and growing me into a better gardener, it was also growing weeds.. and pests… and disease.
Some seedlings died off, and some completely failed to show up at all.
Some plants tragically were snapped in a heavy storm or trampled by an eager toddler.
This year I planted a row of bunny tails grass that was eaten down to nubs by, ironically, a bunny. At first I was annoyed.
Then I thought, OK, a bunny eating all my bunny tails grass is actually funny.
Because I remembered that there’s always next season.
Seeds can be replanted, pests move on, disease can be managed, and every failure is a lesson for next the next try.
That’s the beauty of garden life.
Not everything will thrive, and that’s OK. We can start again; this time with better soil, sharper tools, and a little more wisdom to take on whatever comes next.
In the garden and in life, failure isn’t final, rather, it’s a step toward a better harvest the next time around.
And by the way, even a tiny harvest is worth celebrating—check out this post to see my reasons why.
Life Lesson #5: Perseverance Pays Off
There’s nothing quite like making dinner from food grown and picked right outside your back door.
For one thing, it tastes better.
It’s fresher and more nutritious.
And it’s the tangible reward for all the time and effort put into raising the crop.
It’s also more than food. Growing what I eat connects me to the land and the rhythms of the seasons.
Every crop has its story of storms endured, pests battled, or droughts survived.
Last year I grew a zucchini plant that took every hit it could possibly get. The lid of the cold frame fell on it and broke some of it’s leaves. Squash bugs swarmed the poor thing and tried to kill it. And to add insult to injury, powdery mildew set in at the end of summer.
I nearly pulled it up at least a dozen times throughout the season, but decided to let it fight it out. That summer I got pounds of zucchini. Mostly because I kept forgetting to check, assuming it was dead, and would find giant zucchini hidden under the leaves.
That zucchini reminds me that perseverance pays off.
You may have to work really hard for it. You may have to wait weeks, months, or years for the harvest.
In some ways our gardens reflect us and the hardship we endure.
At the end of the day, I want to be able to look back and know that I pulled through the storms of life and produced something worth savoring in the end.
For more of my thoughts on this, check out my post on how gardening is about more than just growing food.
Life Lesson #6: The Garden Gives More Than It Takes
The last lesson I’ve been learning is that the garden is a giver.
Gardens produce so much harvest from tiny little seeds.
Don’t believe me? Plant a single cherry tomato. Or maybe a zinnia, if flowers are more your speed.
You’ll be overwhelmed by the harvest once the plants come into their own.
But the garden’s gifts aren’t just edible or beautiful.
A few years ago I was struggling with anxiety and self-doubt.
Gardening gave me a safe space to take small risks, celebrate small wins, and connect with people in new ways. It helped me step outside my comfort zone while giving me a place to land in the hard times as well.
Gardening is actually really great for mental health!
The truth is, the garden gives far more than it ever asks for.
I just had to plant a few seeds and show up for them all season long. And when I look at the joy, resilience, and confidence it’s given me, I realize the real harvest isn’t what I pull from the soil. It’s what the soil has planted in me.
Gardens Are Worth Growing Well
Every garden is a little different, and every gardener is too. That’s what makes each one beautiful.
The lessons we learn playing in the dirt stay with us long after the season ends.
Whether you’re just starting out or you’re several years in, I hope you’ll take a moment to reflect on your gardening journey and notice what your garden is teaching you right now.
The garden will change you if you let it. One seed at a time.
And I’d love it if you would share some of the lessons you’ve learned too.
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