The Artist's Garden at Giverny, 1900 by Claude Monet

I love Monet's garden in Giverney. I hope to visit it one day and see it with my own eyes. It made me want to have my own garden in Europe, once I'm done fulfilling my dreams and aspirations in the US.

I read this piece from the Wonderground by Georgina Reid and the way she thinks about gardening is radical.

Gardening is not valued. It's seen as a weekend task involving fighting with a lawn mower and is something people to do when they retire.

It's practical not philosophical, physical not metaphysical. It's not discussed seriously

Gardening can be a tool to combat the increasingly obvious and dangerous effect of climate change.

Gardening should happen everywhere.

I am a gardener. I can’t think of a more important responsibility. Gardening is not just a set of tasks. It’s not restricted to backyards, courtyards, balconies. It can, and should, happen anywhere, everywhere. Gardening is simply a framework for engagement with our world, grounded in care, action and intimacy with place. To garden is to care deeply, inclusively and audaciously for the world outside our homes and our heads. It’s a way of being that is intimately interwoven with the real truths of existence—not the things we’re told to value (money, status, ownership), but the things that actually matter (sustenance, perspective, beauty, connection, growth).

We need to be gardeners to protect our planet.

To be a gardener is to be invested in a place — to know it, to protect it, to be present to it. How can we protect and heal ourselves and our planet if we’re not willing to step into, and value, the role of the gardener?