All the Rules I've Broken With My Own Garden

So you can decide for yourself

I never thought of myself as a rebel, though I do have this sassy “let me show you” streak that rears its ugly head when I feel like I’m being underestimated. My entire love affair with gardening started with this response to my husband questioning if I’d “even like gardening” when given the chance to do it. I marched my booty straight to Home Depot and bought a pot with six veggies in it, killing almost all of them. I was immediately hooked and now, eight years later, we’re living on five acres with a 3600 square-foot garden that’s making me question my sanity.

This entire garden journey has been a return to true self for me (I won’t bore you with the backstory as my book talks a lot about it - shameless plug). A return to play - to developing instincts. I loosely learned the rules, with literally zero science having anything to do with it, and then just experimented my way into replacing the grocery store. I researched on an as-needed basis and then really started digging in and devouring gardening books and articles, amassing knowledge by osmosis.

I’m finding that I LOVE to break a rule. I think I may enjoy the drama of finding my edge and proving that a creative vision can perform above logic. Example A: I decided at 36 weeks pregnant with my third son that I wanted to have a natural birth. Three weeks later, after listening to a few podcasts and getting a basic understanding of hypnobirthing, I was fully in labor with my husband holding a hot pack to my lower back while I gripped a wooden birthing comb and breathed my way into completing our family. I wanted to experience the experience - I wanted to be in free fall trust with God and myself and the universe and my biology. Gardening to a degree feels like that to me. It’s co-creation, it’s instinct, it’s winging it with a lot of proof to be trusted and also tested. Overall, plants want to live and will do so in many many ways.

No surprises when it came to designing my own garden space, I took a lot of liberties, cut corners to save money, and fully knew some decisions I may come to regret, and some may unfold beautifully and redefine how we view function and beauty.

The first rule I broke: my raised beds