You know you’re really a gardener when:
– You cancel dates to watch “Gardeners’ World.”
– You retain plants’ names better than people’s.
– You’re most comfortable in overalls and Wellies.
– You hear the elements of nature in Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony.
– Flattering comments about your garden are like a warm embrace.
– You delight in the rain.
– You like the smell of fresh earth and not-so-fresh manure.
– Your garden precedes your social life in importance.
– Smith and Hawken’s attire is preferable to Victoria Secret’s.
– Visits to garden centers stimulate a Pavlovian response.
– Mud on the kitchen floor doesn’t faze you.
– Your early “playgrounds” were most likely woodlands, streams and fields.
– You have a tendency to anthropomorphize plants – that is, give them human qualities.
– Composting could easily become an obsession.
– You’re not insulted when your beloved gives you an irrigation system for your birthday.
– Your idea of a fun date is going to a flower show/tour.
– Transcendental meditation is an hour in the garden.
Some or all of the above may describe you. I can vividly recall my earliest preoccupations with nature. The feeling I had in my great-grandmother’s garden “rooms;” my first greenhouse sighting at the Roosevelt Mansion on the Hudson River; a preference for the outdoors, be it climbing trees or pondering the mysteries of the frog pond. Even simple things like noticing the changing vegetation as we headed to the Cape for summer vacation. I can’t remember too much about the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY, but I can still picture the surrounding scenery bathed in the summer sun.
I have carried this love of the natural world within me never feeling burdened, although sometimes a bit apart from others. Like the time I remarked to fellow co-eds about the beauty of the White Mountains during a ski weekend in North Conway, NH. They had their sights set on other scenery, so I got some queer looks.
During the early 80s when the world was into computers and electronics, I feigned interest in writing on the subject and used the correct buzz words at trade shows. A subsequent job as a news reporter got me out of tiresome suits and stockings and into earthier subjects. I gravitated toward farmers and 4-H people and away from politicians and police.
In more recent years, I have devoted myself to gardening and found it a comfort when away from home. I had to wince when an acquaintance remarked that gardening was a temporary interest of new moms that would eventually wane. Oh yeah!!? Come back in 30 years and eat those words.
So much for an explanation of what constitutes a gardener and how some of us are destined for it. Ever wonder why? Most people will say it’s simply in their genes, but there may be more to it if you believe in the theory of multiple intelligences. The idea that some people are gifted in certain areas was proposed back in 1983 by Harvard University psychologist and educator Howard Gardner, Ph.D. It contends that we all possess distinct and somewhat autonomous intelligences in varying degrees and that each is of equal value. The nine intelligences, which some critics prefer to describe as talents, include linguistic; logical-mathematical; spatial; bodily kinesthetic; musical; interpersonal; intrapersonal; naturalist. and existential.
Naturalist intelligence is defined as the ability to recognize and classify the numerous species in one’s environment. Those who possess it usually enjoy being outside; like to amass collections; show an instinctual fondness for animals; like to cook or garden; is inquisitive about the names of plants and has a good memory for them; and has an eye for detail, noticing how a newly encountered animal or plant is different from or similar to other such entities. People who seek careers as a biologist, nature illustrator, farmer, chef, gardener, or wild animal trainer are believed to have a strong naturalist intelligence.
So, the next time you’re out golfing or driving along the highway to some destination – a ball game or a shopping mall or the airport – take note of the landscape in its natural or manmade state. It may bolster your own green giftedness a bit. Even if you are more the kinesthetic type.
“Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.” – Henry David Thoreau.
The Seaside Gardener
By Laura McLean