Gardening is an excellent hobby. If you have enjoyed gardening for most of your life, you know the delights it can bring to your world. Gardening gives you the chance to work outside and to feel closer to nature by helping make food, herbs, or beautiful flowers where there was nothing but weeds.
For many, the joy of gardening is far more important than any cost savings they might get from growing their own food. If you did the numbers, the food grown at home is not that much less expensive than buying it at the local grocery supermarket. However, to have a garden full of producing plants that give you fresh food is so gratifying. Gratification comes from both growing your own food and harvesting.
Many of us can no longer garden the way we used to garden. Even those who are still living in their own home may find the physical labour of tilling the soil for planting and then tending the garden may be more than they can do at this stage of life. While you may want to get out there and get your hands dirty while planting your favourite flowers or crop-producing plants, you must be mindful of any doctor’s instructions that tell you to take it easy.
Others may have moved out of that house they owned that had a yard where they could create their garden. Maintenance is a concern for any gardener, so you let your kids work with you in the garden. You could also sell your old place and get a condo or apartment that is more manageable.
Sometimes economy or health concerns play a factor in where you are living and the best place for you right now is an assisted care facility where you can have quality medical care available should you need it. But giving up gardening may be one of the many transitions to a smaller living space that you grieve about losing and missing every spring and summer when you want to be out there in nature enjoying the experience of growing things.
Where there’s a will, there’s away. And there are new ways you can continue to enjoy the fun of gardening within the constraints of your lifestyle. One way might be to look into getting some window boxes for your apartment. People who want a small indoor flower garden often use these long planting boxes or nurture house planets. But you could get a few of these kinds of growing spaces, solicit some help from the facility maintenance people or your kids to get them installed and filled with good earth and enjoy puttering in those small gardening spaces and see the little plants you picked sprout and grow. With the extra time you have because of retirement, you will do an outstanding job of caring for that little garden.
You can also help your kids learn to garden. By adopting the “sweet but helpful Grandparent” attitude, you may find that your children and their spouses wish they knew your gardening secrets and with a bit of partnering, you could use their muscle and flexibility to set up a nice big garden at their house. Then you can just come over from time to time to tend it as much as you can and “supervise.”
Be there on harvest day so that everyone in the family can enjoy the fresh produce and herbs you grew. And you will get a sense of renewal that you found a new way to garden that lets you keep a treasured pastime and do so within the constraints that retired life brings.
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