Growing Love
How plants can teach us how to love
Written by Maddie Gamble, Lifestyle Staff Writer
Illustrated by Ainsley Skomal, Contributing Graphic Staff
Love is a lot like gardening. It requires time, patience and affection. Gardening teaches us how to nurture. It teaches us that in order to create something beautiful, we must be attentive and loving.
All of these things are true for love, too. The parallel may seem a bit unconventional, so let me break it down for you.
Step 1: Plant the seed
The first step in growing a plant is to plant the seed. We don’t just expect something to sprout from the ground and miraculously grow into a blooming flower. We create a foundation and nurture it to give it life.
Similarly with love, we have to create a foundation for a relationship. We have to make an effort to experience the firsts with our partners. Make memories. Form a connection. Learn each other’s faults. Form a foundation for our love to grow.
Step 2: Commit time and energy
Every day, you must commit your time and energy to water the plant, making sure it has the nutrients to grow. Without it, the plant will shrivel to nothing.
Time is arguably one of the hardest things in love to navigate, yet it is essential to creating a love that lasts. We need to invest our energy into learning what our partner needs to allow the relationship to grow. It’s not always easy to give our time to someone else. There are a million other things we could be doing. It’s all about dedication. Every day, you dedicate your precious time to a person because you know it will bloom into something beautiful if you do.
Step 3: Pruning
One step in gardening that is often overlooked is trimming away the dead leaves, a process called pruning. To grow a healthy plant, you must trim away the parts of the plant that aren’t thriving. If you neglect this step, the unhealthy parts will consume the plant in its entirety.
I believe this step is overlooked in relationships too. We often bury the problems we have with love deep inside ourselves because they are too tough to face. Communicating struggles with a partner(s) is hard, but it’s also necessary to keep baggage from consuming a relationship.
Step 4: Observe
The final step in gardening is my favorite—observing the beauty of your investment. In both love and gardening, you reach a point where you can simply enjoy the beauty of what you have created. All the hard days and time invested result in something so beautiful, something so worth it.
The comparison between planting and love has primarily focused on our relationships with other individuals. But all these parallels stand true with our relationships with ourselves, especially when we find ourselves in a stage of healing. We need to be patient, invest time in regrounding ourselves, recognize our struggles and work to find ourselves in a place of pure happiness.
Gardening itself is a hobby that is good for healing and the soul. According to licensed psychologist Seth Gillihan, gardening allows us to be ourselves, receive love, be open to change, escape from our thoughts and slow down (2020).
Connecting with nature in any form can teach us how to love deeper and nurture the individuals in our lives. Next time you find yourself needing a little love counseling, pick up a shovel, find some seeds and grow a plant–because love is a lot like gardening.
Sources:
Gillihan, J. (2020, January 15). Why Are Gardens so Good for the Soul? Psychology Today.