Lessons in A Graden

Healing gardens
By Ratna Rajaiah
Let me first tell you what they are calling it in all those high-falutin’ places where doctors and researchers and scientists with degrees as long as your herbaceous border huddle together to give serious sounding names to these things. They are calling it therapeutic horticulture. You and I know it as gardening. Therapeutic, did I say? When, for many of us, gardening is a thing that gets you all hot and sweaty and dirty and something that maalis do for a living? I mean, as long as you can just pop into a shop and buy that bunch of dewy fresh roses or crunchy green spinach, why would you want to muck about knee deep in worms and compost?
Good question because that’s where I start explaining the “therapeutic horticulture”. Because gardening apart making things grow and bloom, also helps you grow and bloom. How so? Well, first of all, it’s one of the nicest ways to get fresh air, sunlight and exercise. Think about it – if you had a choice of getting your daily dose of exercise by walking 10 boring circles around that park or by spending half an hour helping your brinjals to fatten or coaxing that particularly stubborn button rose to break into bud, what would it be?
10 boring circles, did you say? Really?
Okay, fine. Then consider this.
Nature’s potted pick-me-up.
Gardening is long been considered one of the more pleasurable not to mention effective ways to de-stress, unwind and relax. There is something about pottering around in a garden or even just around the pots in your apartment verandah which is known to soothe and loosen up all those tense knotted muscles and thoughts. And that’s not all - gardening is the ultimate rejuvenator because there’s something in it to tickle and please each one of your senses – a lush symphony of sights and sounds, textures and smells, even tastes, all coming together to draw you gently to nestle into Mother Nature’s ample, comforting, forgiving bosom. So, the next time you’re at the end – or beginning - of one of those days specially designed to turn you into a gibbering nervous wreck, take a slow walk around that garden.
A garden teaches you that some of the most exhilarating things in life come not packaged in a bottle or a pill but as a that patch of marigolds arguing with the sun about whose orange is brighter.
Patience is watching a little yellow flower turn into a tomato.
Slow down, they’re all telling us, as we shrink everything to become sleeker, slimmer and faster, even the seconds on our digital timers. Slow down or you’ll have a blowout, they say. But I don’t know how to, you wail, as you pop another antacid and frantically punch the buttons which should have delivered instant success, instant fame and instant coffee but is 3 whole seconds late. Ah, but here’s a place you can learn ….to slow down. Get a tomato plant. And when it decks itself up in little yellow flowers, remember that they are a bunch of promises that it’s making to you that soon there will be your own plump juicy, homegrown tomatoes. But notice that it’s just saying soon - no date, no ETA. Because those tomatoes are going to ripen at their own pace, no turbo-charged ripener to speed up the process. And there’s nothing you can do about it but wait, taking long, deep breaths, listening to the music of those tomatoes ripening in the sun…
A garden teaches you that in life, things happen at their own pace which often may not match yours. All you can do is wait and in the meantime, enjoy the scenery …
Hope is a papaya seed
Ever thought that a seed can teach you how to hope? You pop into your friendly neighbourhood nursery and buy a little flowerpot and some papaya seeds. You plant some, following the instructions carefully. And then you wait, because there’s nothing more to do. But as you do, you also hope – that maybe, just maybe when you wake up one morning, and blearily peer at that unrelenting patch of mud, there will be a little, frail green shoot struggling out of it. And that maybe, just maybe the shoot will become a little sapling. And then a tree in your backyard and then one day, you’ll look up and see it festooned with fat green papayas. And one morning, there on your breakfast plate will be a bowl full of juicy, glistening, pinky-orange chunks of ….papaya!
Gardening teaches you that even if today’s been a write-off, there’s always tomorrow.

Humility and a fat green pea
Think about this. Let’s say for a moment that you are a rocket scientist, part of the crack team that’s designing of that whatisit that’s going to get us to Mars. (And we better hurry, because at the rate that we are polluting and depleting our water sources, we may soon need to tap into those traces of moisture that they’ve found there!). Or then maybe you’re the chappie who with a flicker of his eyelid can make the Sensex soar or plummet. What I mean to say is - you are the cat’s meow and you know it. Now consider this. It’s just a silly little pea plant, is it not? A few leaves on a puny little vine that came out of a pile of dirt, right? Then how does it know when it is winter and time to fill those pods bursting with fat, juicy green peas? And how does that night queen know that the sun has set and it’s time to burst into riotous blossom? Then think how every cell of every plant and every flower knows when exactly to thrive and when to die? Consider the hugely sophisti
cated and complex systems of programming implanted in every living cell which we have only dimly begun to comprehend. And then look at who you really are…
A garden teaches you that no matter who you are and what you have achieved, you are but a miniscule speck in the macrocosm of Life.

The bare necessities of life
In the garden you learn that the recipe to make another being happy, be that a snapdragon or a human being, is actually the world’s simplest thing. Food, water, a patch of sunlight and love. Mix well and serve. And watch your spouse or that chrysanthemum shake off that chronic droop. The garden is also a great place to learn about love. You see, plants are like children. They do not care if you are young or old, fat or thin, black or white, rich or poor, good looking or ugly. If you love them and care for them, they will love you right back by happily growing and blooming and loading their branches with all kinds of goodies just for your pleasure!
The garden teaches you that it takes very little to be happy.
I think we’ve covered the basic stuff. The rest will come as you dig and water or just walk around your plants. Wait a minute, you say. This is all goody-goody fluffy stuff for aspiring Pollyannas. Give us the hardware, facts and figures, things that have been put into a test tube and researched. Okay. So here goes. The reason why they have begun to call gardening “therapeutic horticulture” is because that is exactly what it is increasingly being used for. As a therapeutic aid in the treatment of a whole host of things from dementia and Alzheimer's Disease to addiction, the rehabilitation of the mentally and physically disabled, geriatric care and even in helping rehabilitate convicts to get back into mainstream life. The introduction of a garden of a park in the otherwise stark and ugly inner city areas where people can participate in tending it has known to have a significant impact on things like teenage crime. It has been seen that gardening gives people in these circu
mstances a sense of purpose, a feeling of hope and when they see their effort literally blossom and take fruit, a sense of being useful instead of useless.
One more thing. Therapeutic horticulture is a broad term that encompasses anything from actual cultivation of plants to just standing around and enjoying the experience of being surrounded by a beautiful garden or landscape. Research now shows that just a view of trees may reduce the recovery time in the hospital after surgery by almost an entire day!
So get acquainted with a garden and you may be surprised to find that what grows in that cabbage patch is much more than just cabbages!