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How does your garden grow?
By Leslie McCann

I realize the metaphor is corny, but I can’t help but indulge in the analogy… just for a moment.

Thinking about relationships, it occurred to me that they’re a lot like gardens. Gardens can grow beautiful flowers or they can be taken over by noxious weeds. They can give us great pleasure, or we can shudder at the thought of having to tend to them. Perhaps we’ve neglected the garden so long that the task of pulling weeds and planting flowers seems too daunting to even begin. However, if we’ve been planting beautiful flowers for years and pulling weeds diligently, we can derive great pleasure in spending time enjoying the fruits of our labor. Our garden is a place of comfort, beauty and joy for us. A place to feel proud of—a sense of accomplishment.

If we haven’t planted any flower seeds in our garden, we certainly wouldn’t expect beautiful flowers to magically appear. However, in relationships, I think that is precisely what happens. We don’t want all the work it takes to nurture and grow a beautiful garden, we just want to pick the flowers, smell the roses and enjoy the comfort and joy. Yet, without planting seeds of compassion, caring, consistency, compliments, respect and character, aren’t we really just leaving room for weeds to grow? Weeds in the name of resentment, rejection, ridicule, and repulsion? If we don’t plant seeds of support, sincerity, honesty, loyalty and love, aren’t we planting seeds of doubt, loneliness, infidelity, and hatred? Is it realistic to put little to no time and effort into nurturing your garden and then expect it to give you great pleasure--to be beautiful?

Weeds are all the things in your relationship that dig in to, take hold of, and suffocate the flowers. They are habits you have that your partner despises, people in your life that aren’t healthy for your
relationship, a job, a hobby, a lack of interest, a lack of time, a lack of support, flirting, drinking, pornography, selfishness, righteous indignation, an inability to take accountability, being
self-centered, not listening—and so on. Weeds need much less attention than flowers. Weeds will propagate themselves--simply ignore them and they’ll quickly annihilate your garden. They’ll even strangle the few flowers you’ve managed to nurture from seedlings. They’ll take over your garden precipitately. Leaving weeds unattended, in even the most prolific flower garden, will quickly make all your hard work incapable of being noticed.

The next time you feel like your relationship is in the dumps, like you’re not appreciated, like you can never do anything right, and you feel like quitting—think about how much you’ve tended to your garden. Have you provided the daily watering of love and affection; the daily sunshine of compliments and appreciation? Have you given your garden the seasonal fertilizing with gifts, extended time together, traditions and goals? Have you done the weeding of negativity at first sight; do you have and maintain the proper tools of compassion, comfort, caring and commitment? Have you removed rodents such as people or things that dig deep holes into and eat away at your flowers? If you haven’t tended to your garden, you shouldn’t be surprised if there are no flowers to enjoy. And if you’ve chosen to ignore noxious weeds in hopes that they’ll just go away, you shouldn’t be surprised if your garden is an ugly place; a source of disdain and dread.

After years of neglect, it’s easy to want to leave the garden with all its weeds behind, to end your relationship and start with fresh weed-free soil. However, fresh soil doesn’t come with flowers--they’ll
still need to be planted, watered, fertilized and receive daily sunshine. You’ll still need tools and you’ll still need to keep the rodents under control. Fresh soil is not immune to weeds, and the pernicious stinkers will still need to be removed at first sight. Fresh soil is just another garden, needing nurture and tending to. If you want a garden, you have to be willing to do the daily, tedious, sometimes back-breaking work to reap the benefits of its beauty. You have to plant the roses, feed the roses, water the roses, fertilize the roses and nurture the roses to get to a place where you can stop and smell them.

Some people just opt for store-bought flowers--which are nice, but their beauty is temporary. The maintenance is low, but the pleasure they instill quickly fades. They are not a consistently comforting
place to go to evoke comfort and joy—they provide no sense of accomplishment. While beautiful, they are not a garden.