There’s something with invisible gardening. But I don’t mean that; I am referring to actual gardening when I say gardening.

I have had this thought on my mind for quite a while. When I was a little kid I would go around in gardens and be endlessly fascinated by all the flora and fauna (mostly the flora though) present there, and be preoccupied with some observations (say, something like the concept of invasive vines growing on other plants and stifling them but still managing to put on a green show on the outside). The interactions and dynamics of the ever-so-silent plant world would be very mysterious and something that’d be nice to study (and I’d say all of it still fascinates me).

I have had no formal training in the art of gardening and haven’t every successfully raised a plant to grow beyond a certain point (sob, sob, for those poor little greens I murdered by forgetting to pour water). There are two things that are driving me towards considering gardening as a serious hobby:

  • Wanting to raise a garden with various interesting species of plants and observing how they interact, if at all they do
  • Making myself feel less guilty about all those little saplings that didn’t last beyond my sense of irresponsibility

It does take a lot of responsibility to raise a successful garden and maintain it, I suppose. Here in the Netherlands, I’ve come across a lot of “patches” where one can claim a small part as their personal gardening space and do their own thing there (the gardens being called volkstuinen). I found it a really nice concept for dense urban areas where finding a lot of green space can otherwise be difficult!

That is one immediate thing on my to-do list - once there is enough time, to learn how to raise a garden effectively. Maybe alone, maybe with a group of like-minded proto-gardeners, but it certainly needs a shot.

This ties in with similar ideas (but which a bit further up ahead in the future of things) - like learning how to grow my own food (micro-agriculture, so to speak), and also beekeeping (I really haven’t a clue how people came up with this idea, to begin with).

There’s a lot to do.