52 Ways Your Garden Can Help You Care (and Reduce Stress)

A monarch butterfly on a verbena bonariensis

I’m lying on a blanket in my back garden and I’m reading Brooke McAlary’s book, Care: The radical art of taking time.

Cicadas are clicking in our neighbours’ yards and, above me, the pecan tree hums with bees that hang from its lime yellow, pollen covered cattails. Two willy wagtails have built a nest in the tree - I can see one of them sitting on their clutch of eggs.

It’s warm. White butterflies pepper the air and sweet peas cling to climbing frames, pods drying in the midday sun. Light falls through the pecan tree in patches and I feel as though I’m underwater. 

It sounds very peaceful, doesn’t it? Idyllic, maybe. The only problem is it’s a Saturday and I’m meant to be writing the blog post you’re reading now.

Which is - actually - the most perfect irony of all. Because I want to tell you about Brooke’s book, Care; a book I’ve loved reading this year. A book about finding ways to care more about the small things in life. About prioritising moments spent with friends and family. About remembering to pay attention to the sensation of the morning sun hitting your face, or a new flower slowly unfurling. About prioritising what’s actually important, and how this will lead us to live happier, simpler lives filled with more care for ourself and for others.

And so, in order to tell you about this book, I abandon my spot in the garden. I head inside to the dimly lit kitchen and I sit alone beside a cold cup of coffee, penning this post on a sunny Saturday, at the tail end of a month where I have given myself exactly 1 day off and have spent absolutely no time being present or prioritising the little things.

The truth is, I’m pooped.

The truth is, I really need to follow Brooke’s advice.

In the garden, under the Elderflower and Mulberry trees

Big Care, Self-Care, Small Care

The problem Brooke identifies in her book is that we tend to care a lot about things that don’t necessarily fuel our wellbeing on a day-to-day basis. We find ourselves knotted up, caring about the big stuff like climate change, politics, global food shortages, topsoil erosion, wealth inequality, micro-plastics, insect extinction and glyphosate (Brooke calls this Big Care). And you just can’t hold all of that in your head for very long without getting totally burned out.

At the same time, we’re told that the solution to all of our stress is Self Care - a term that has slowly transformed over the last decades. While it used to describe simple acts like clothing and feeding ourselves, it now usually refers to things that cost money and can be turned into pretty Instagram posts (face masks, candles etc).

The problem is there’s very little in the middle. Either we’re fretting about the ice caps melting or we’re madly throwing highly-scented salts into our baths. Or we’re doing both at once and wondering why we’re simultaneously anxious, broke and smelling like ylang ylang.

We’ve been doing Care wrong - I’ve been doing Care wrong. Because (while there’s nothing wrong with climate advocacy or bath salts) Big Care and Self Care aren’t enough to sustain a happy life, reduce stress or quell anxiety. We need a third kind of care, a kind that Brooke calls Small Care.

Small care is closing our computers, shutting off our phones. It’s buying a stranger a cup of coffee. Watching clouds amble across the sky. It’s calling your mother every Thursday at 7pm, writing a letter to a friend and hunting for worms in your garden. There are so many small things we can do that make our lives - and the lives of others - a bit warmer, closer and more meaningful. Brooke’s book is a testament to these small acts of care and a practical guide for including more of them into your life.

Care: The radical art of taking time

Brooke McAlary’s book is divided into 9 chapters, each devoted to a different kind of Small Care: connection, kindness, awe, nature, making, movement, play, rest and healing. At the end of each chapter, Brooke recommends various little things you can do to add more Small Care into your life. It’s a bit like a guidebook for living, and everything in it rang so true for me. Brooke put words to what I had been feeling - that often it’s the small things (things that might appear entirely ordinary at first) that really contribute to our daily happiness and wellbeing.

Reconnecting with nature can help to reduce feelings of stress and anxiety

Small care in our gardens

So, as we reach the end of another long year, I wanted to share a few of my own ideas inspired by Brooke and her book. If you like the suggestions the follow, you will LOVE Brooke’s book, which is a beautiful summation of scientific and anthropological findings, personal insights and wise recommendations. Grab it wherever you buy your books!

For now, I hope to add one more (garden-themed) drop into the ocean of Small Care that Brooke has created. To give you a few ideas for ways that your garden can help you to slow down, relax, reconnect, heal, reduce stress and anxiety and give you the space to think and the time for small moments of happiness.

There are 52 ideas in total - one for every week of 2022 - loosely arranged around the chapters of Brooke’s book. Try one, try them all!

I hope they help you bring a little more Small Care into your life.

Ways to find connection

1. Look for community gardens in your area and see if you can join one

2. Visit a seed swap or garden festival and chat with other green thumbs

3. Help a struggling friend or family member by organising a busy bee in their garden

4. Ask friends around for an afternoon drink in your backyard

5. Find an untended patch of earth (a vacant lot, an unplanted curb side) and scatter native wildflower seeds for the whole community to enjoy

Ways to show kindness

6. Pick flowers for someone you love

7. Leave a basket of your excess fruits or veggies out for your neighbours

8. Have friends who are new parents? Make them a few jars of homemade pesto so they have a quick and healthy dinner on hand

9. Take a basket of fresh salad leaves to a friend’s house, so they can have homegrown salads for the week (you could make them this vinaigrette too!)

10. Plant spring bulbs in a friend or family member’s garden when they’re not at home. When spring arrives the bulbs will burst through the soil - a beautiful surprise

11. Next time you find a spider inside, release it out into your garden so it can make a new home

12. Grow some new plants for the native birds and bees (borage and comfrey help attract blue banded bees)

Ways to inspire awe

13. Follow a bug around the garden for 10 minutes

14. Examine a tiny patch of soil to discover all the lifeforms living in it

15. Stare at a flower up close - REALLY close - until you discover details about it that you never knew existed

16. Lie on the grass and stare up into the branches of a tree - imagine it perspiring and respiring, like a breathing entity

17. Go into your garden at night to see how the animals change - look for moths pollinating night flowers, listen to the insects singing differently, watch how new shadows fall and how the flowers open and close

18. Sit outside in the evening and watch the sun set over your garden

Ways to enjoy making

19. Learn how to incorporate flowers into your hair-dos (a trend that harks back to Pagan festivals of fertility!)

20. Spend the morning painting a watercolour in your garden

21. Press some flowers between the pages of heavy books

22. Build a fire pit and cook your dinner over it

23. Create your own sundial with sticks and stones. Test it out on the summer solstice to see where the light falls.

Ways to move more

24. Dig a big hole and plant a new tree in it

25. Weed your lawn while kneeling

26. Do some yoga or pilates stretches in your garden in the sunshine

27. Walk along your garden paths and walls, trying to balance

28. Crouch down to see what your garden looks like from a bug’s eye view

Ways to play

29. Start a game of bocce in the garden

30. Give your kids an Easter egg hunt outside (or hide your partner’s birthday/Christmas gifts in the garden!)

31. Make a daisy chain

32. Play loud music and dance while you water your plants

33. Pitch a tent and camp in your backyard for a night

34. Play hide and seek in the garden with your kids (or your partner! or your pets!)

35. Turn the sprinklers on and throw a party for your kids/nephews/grandkids or anyone who’s prepared to act as if they’re under 12 and run through cascading fountains of water while shrieking

Ways to rest

36. Spread a picnic blanket out and fall asleep in the sunshine

37. Read a book outside

38. Drag a blow up mattress into your garden and watch the stars appear

39. Sit quietly in your garden with a hot cup of tea

40. Watch the wind blow through the leaves of your plants

41. Watch as the sun moves across the sky

42. Sit in your front garden and watch passers by come and go

43. Find a spot in your most flower-filled patch of garden and watch the insects visit each bloom

44. Walk through your garden observing everything that is coming into leaf or about to flower

45. Take an edible tour of your garden, tasting little bits of herbs and edible flowers as you go

46. Take a sensory tour of your garden, smelling, tasting, touching and listening to the plants and animals

47. Have an at-home picnic in your backyard

Ways to heal

48. Start your day peacefully by eating breakfast outside (no phones allowed!)

49. Use your garden as inspiration for a mindfulness meditation (for tips on growing a sensory garden for mindfulness, check out this blog post).

50. Clear your mind by journalling in your garden each morning

51. Immerse yourself in your garden by trying these strange but surprisingly rewarding mindfulness-based activities, and finally

52. When you’re having a rough day, try channeling your negative feelings into different kinds of gardening (for ideas on how to match your gardening to your mood, check out this post)

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