Garden Pruning, Gaining Clarity, and Leaning in to Self Trust
As one who had visited many edible gardens and initiated various garden-related initiatives over the last decade, people were often surprised to hear me referring to myself as the ‘non-gardener’. If plants in my home garden survived, I would tell others that Nature was the main gardener. If plants in the gardens cared for by a group of people thrived, I would often credit others and not myself.
If I was in a garden on my own, I would:
- enjoy the space
- contribute by doing some weeding
- feel helpless
On the last point, I often wasn’t sure if I knew what needed to be done, what could be done, and if I would know how to do what’s needed correctly. I would trust other people, but I wouldn’t trust myself. This continued even when people started turning to me for lesser known knowledge about locally grown edible plants.
If I was in a garden, I often felt I needed a more experienced person nearby to guide me in the right direction, even if it was the basic tasks like sowing seeds, pruning, and transplanting stem cuttings. Yes, I had learned them in various workshops and gardening sessions.
My friends and I would also say that there is a gap between learning in a classroom, and taking action on your own. We often wondered how to close that gap, even if we have experienced doing so in different areas of our lives.
It wasn’t until ~1.5 years ago that I started believing in my own compost-making skills. By that time, I had many months of experience guiding others to make compost via probono or paid programs. I also successfully guided a neighbour to make compost with my new knowledge, and started making smaller compost heaps to care for as an individual. With the accumulated knowledge, I acknowledged my own growth as a maker and experimenter.
I started seeing the neighbourhood garden as an experimental space. I would go over when less people are around to care for the smaller heaps. My experience making compost with neighbours helped me when others are not around. As a group, we would collect organic materials layer by layer. For example, we would add the fallen leaves and twigs/stems layer, before gathering the fresh green cuttings for the next layer, and then collect more fallen leaves and twigs/stems for the next layer. The systematic way of making and gathering helped me know what to do in the garden.
With this insight, I would often tell people, I was a compost-maker first, and then a gardener as it only when I made compost, that I knew what to do next in a garden.
This morning, I experienced yet another pivotal moment.
Over the weekend, I had attended a 2-day Intro to Syntropic Agroforestry course conducted by the farmers and co-founders of A Little Wild. It was the first of its kind by ALW team; the course sold out at least one month before.
The workshop helped me unlock more clarity and gain deeper understanding of various things. It was nice and eye-opening to finally have an understanding on what syntropic agroforestry means, and to have a set of guiding framework and principles on how to work a land over space and time. I think the principles and framework that was shared guide farmers/gardeners know what to do in the garden, and how to evolve with it. It helped me think of new ideas for group projects, be it on learning more about different plants, or having gardening sessions for people who attended such intro sessions to practice different principles or gardening skills.
This morning, I walked over to my estate’s community garden and saw a mulberry tree that had collapsed as it was top-heavy. I followed my intuition and started pruning plants that I had wanted to trim for quite some time.
Here’s the result of my first 40-min self-initiated pruning, without others as a supportive guide! All these from a few plants in a small area of the garden. Usually I just squeezed past them, or as a group, we generally agreed we could do with more experienced or hands-on people.
The workshop had more theory than practical. I think I released a lot of pent up energy during the pruning session!
As I pruned, I felt a renewed sense of joy and purpose as various memories started connecting and making sense for me. And a growing sense of trust within myself for knowing what needs to be done, and how to do it well.
Memories that came up included how my neighbours and I were making compost with fallen leaves and garden trimmings, years before I started experimenting different ways to make compost on my own.
At one time, our composting activity was every 6 months. It was not planned, just going with how fast we observed our static piles of compost was breaking down. We would add the fallen leaves and twigs/stems layer, before gathering the fresh green cuttings for the next layer. Our piles were at least 2 m wide, and 1.5 m high. This meant that the garden plants had a good trim every 6 months. We would do this as a group, and the sequential layers meant a lot of synchronised activity in a short time!
Coincidentally, at A Little Wild, the managed syntropic tree lines would be pruned every 6 months too. I felt that the learnings that the workshop gave me confidence to finally give pruning a go, even though I have started exploring it in less visible ways.
I look forward to reconnecting with my neighbourhood 10+ year-old garden, and experiencing deeper appreciation and growth.
