Figuring out why you garden is the key to finding fulfillment in gardening
Do you have a WHY for deciding WHAT you’ll grow in your garden this year? I feel like in our culture, we hear a lot of talk about finding a vision or clarifying mission statements for businesses. But on a personal level, I find I’m a lot happier if I first think about why I want to do a project and only then make decisions about exactly what the project will entail. I am generally more satisfied if I look at life through the lens of my WHY – my mission.
For example: if I am gardening for pleasure, for stress relief, for “flower therapy,” then I need to look at what I’ll grow through the lens of what gives me joy – not what’s the most popular, or what brings my neighbor joy.
If I have only a few hours a week to commit to my garden and my goal is to grow flowers for my home, then I need to look at how much I’ll grow through the lens of simply filling my kitchen table-vase (any maybe my neighbor’s too?!), not filling my entire backyard with a task that will eat up all my free time this summer.
Make sense?
Triple Wren’s “Why”
At Triple Wren, our primary internal goal is to equip others to share beauty. We want to give our flower friends the imperative: Share beauty!
As small business owners, clarifying our vision for the business means in many ways that Steve and I are clarifying our vision of ourselves. Our Triple Wren Farms vision means we make choices like beginning our Novice Hybridizer program, paying royalties to hybridizers for every tuber and plant we sell out of our Legacy Program, and holding our own TWF hybrid dahlias close for a few years while we focus on being connectors for existing and new hybridizers. We are focused on equipping others to share beauty instead of sharing the beauty we create. There will probably be a season/time for that for us, but what we’re called to do right now is to stick with this specific mission of equipping others.
What is your why?
So let me challenge you today – do you know your why? Are you plowing along doing what you’ve always done in your garden, or doing the popular thing, or doing what you think others expect of you instead of making decisions through the lens of your specific vision for your garden efforts? It would be an amazing, loving, beneficial Valentine’s gift to yourself to take an hour this week and try to refine your WHY for your garden, and then honestly look at your garden plans and decide if they match up.
