Why Gardening is My New Favorite Hobby

Gardening and Mike in the same sentence? My mother would say those two words have never been uttered in the same sentence in 27 years of my life. Heck, my thumb is the farthest shade from green in the traditional sense but not in the type of gardening I like to do.

The way I see it, building, maintaining, and growing relationships is no different than growing a garden. You plant seeds, add water, fertilize, water some more, repeat. Then one day, you wake up and have a beautiful mixture of diverse plant life, or relationships in this instance, in your backyard.

The germination stage isn’t easy. You have to buy some tools. Get your hands dirty. Pluck some weeds and hope they don’t come back. Then you can start digging holes for your new seeds to blossom. In a relationship sense, this means putting yourself out there, letting go of some people from your past, taking initiative to introduce yourself and break the ice with new people, and asking some trusted friends for a few introductions into their friend circles or professional network.

Next comes the growth stage, aka watering your garden. Synonymous with water is beer, wine, and coffee. Not to insinuate that all relationships are rooted in drinking together but the reality is that people connect over sharing food and drink together. Breaking bread together can be traced back to ancient times as a means of getting to know those around you. And hey, a little liquid courage never hurt anyone!

What happens as you continually invest time harvesting and planting different kinds of relationships is that your friend circles soon start to resemble a beautiful mix of humans from all walks of life; some with similar interests, others with totally different and diverse interests. What once started as some seeds and stems can transform itself into a full-fledged garden; whether that be your circle of friends and/or professional network.

As your plants and flowers grow, they will start bearing fruits, both literally and figuratively. Literally speaking, they may cook or pick up a tab and feed you, your next job might come through them, they can help you get rid of some unwanted weeds along the way, and perhaps best of all is having a genuinely enjoyable friend to enjoy the view with as your gardens start to grow and bear fruits.

But before that can happen, let’s be real; building friendships can be really hard. Sometimes you have to meet a lot of people in order to find a few that you really enjoy and resonate with. When I get in a rut, I remind myself of a Latin phrase that the CEO of my former employer emphasized, “luctor et emergo” meaning struggle and emerge. He always said you often have to dig through the dirt more than you think to get to flowering stage.

The unfortunate part of gardening is that sometimes seeds just don’t grow. The most common reasons being not enough water, keeping your plants in the shade, poor soil quality, a structurally unstable garden, or sometimes neighboring seeds soak up all the sun and water. The same can be said for relationships in that a shaky foundation will not yield growth and trust, too few genuine conversations over food and drink together, a lack of common interests to connect on or on the contrary not diverse enough of interests to keep the conversation interesting, gaps in geography, and other relationships soaking up too much attention.

Now you might have read to here and be thinking, “that’s a great metaphor, Mike, but what value can gardening have in my life?”

A backyard garden has no real monetary value. People don’t just dig up an apple tree or cut down a beautiful flower to sell for money because they now bear fruit and beauty. No, instead they continue watering their garden only to cherish it even more. In this instance, gardens have both tangible and intangible value. In an intangible sense, my friends mean the world to me but tangibly speaking, they also provide a great deal of value. We’ve helped feed one another, opened doors professionally and personally speaking, provided places to stay while traveling, acted as sounding boards for all things life, worked together on side hustle projects, and gone on adventures together.

As I write this article, I find myself in Toronto, en route to Nova Scotia for the summer. In doing so, I am leaning on my amazing friends to give me a place to put my head at night. I would not be able to embark on this journey if not for many of my friends tangible and intangible support. So to all of you in my garden, I thank and salute you!

A few tips I keep in mind when growing my garden:

• Help others water their garden. In the process, learn what works for them.
• Try planting some seeds that you didn’t think would grow in your soil. Sometimes they will more grow fruit than you could ever imagine.
• Never consider yourself a gardening expert.
• Keep your shovel blade sharp.
• If you’re struggling to grow your garden, my first suggestion is buying a shovel.
• Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty.
• While people often have a fence around their garden to protect against intruders coming into eat without asking, people actually love to share the fruits of the garden IF you ask first.
• Travel to see what plants grow in other places.
• Take some time to smell the roses along the way.

Life’s a garden. Now go out and DIG IT!

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