Secrets in the soil

How your environment impacts your growth

The garden contains wisdom that has existed as long as women have been tending their weeds. If you’ve tried your hand at vegetable gardening— you know how magical, maddening and mysterious it is to grow something that is seemingly so simple, yet complex.

For centuries, women have been growing fruits, vegetables, flowers, herbs and teas to heal illnesses, clear energy, delight the senses and feed loved ones. 

Today, we grow for many of the same reasons, but in my garden, I pay close attention to the secrets that Mother Nature intends for me to learn.

The expertise it takes to be an successful grower takes years if not decades to cultivate but it doesn’t take years to realize the overlaps between growth in the garden and growth in life.

Secret #1: The health of every garden depends on the soil

At the beginning of each season, you have to take a good look at the quality of your soil. What this means is that you have to consider if your soil is depleted and if so, what can you do to improve the quality of your soil.

In the garden, plants can certainly grow in all kinds of different soil, but do best when it’s healthy, nutrient dense soil.

When you are trying to recover your true nature, trust your intuition or live with more meaning— it’s important that you improve all of your environments so that you can grow properly in this season of your life: home, body, relationships, thoughts and purpose.

Secret #2: A plant only grows in its correct environment, not the other way around

A plant can only grow if the environment is correct. Each seed packet has a list of growth conditions to help the gardener decide how to best set up this plant for a healthy growing season.

A plant can only grow when the gardener creates the correct growing environment for the plant. In this metaphor, you are the gardener and your life is the garden. You must find the correct environment for your growth and then you must put in the effort to take care of your home, body, relationships, thoughts and purpose.

When you think about what environments are good for your growth, it may become clear that you are not in the right environment. Of course, you can still grow without addressing these areas, but your growth will not produce as big of a harvest.

Once you address and improve those areas of your life, growth is imminent.

Secret #3: Healthy soil does not appear overnight

It takes time and effort to improve the quality of your soil. If the ground you are planting in has been neglected or this is your first time addressing the quality of the soil, miracles do not happen instantly.

You must do the hard work it requires to figure out what needs to be added to your life and how you can improve all of the environments that might have a significant affect on your ability to reach goals, trust your intuition or to live with purpose and clarity.

Think of your soil as the foundation for your growth and do what can to start adding nutrients today. Be patient with yourself and know that just like in the vegetable garden, nothing grows overnight.

It’s a beautiful metaphor to see that growing a garden can help me better understand how life works. I feel so lucky to have noticed that patterns revealed to me by Mother Nature and to apply them to my life.

Right now, I am in the process of improving my own soil by addressing my relationship with my body. I have struggled for many years (like most people) with body image and sugar addiction.

I am in the process of writing a book about the phases of growth found in the garden and how you can apply this wisdom to a season in your life.

I’ve noticed that there are 12 phases in a season of growth in the garden and so I’ve started to apply this philosophy to understand and outgrow my addiction to sugar.

I figured by applying my finding to my own life will help me write something that can bring value to your life as well. I’m debating sharing my personal experience with you, but unsure if this is the right platform for me.

It seems as though this platform (Substack) is morphing into a full-blown social media platform, and since I loathe the maneuvering and fakery that comes with social media, I am considering moving my writing elsewhere.

My intuition is asking me to slow down, take the necessary time to improve my soil and to share what I learn when the lesson is complete (and maybe along the way).

To growth-

Ashley