In February, many Colorado gardeners are steeped in new seed catalogs and plans for indoor starters. In a way, it has always felt like my focus on the next gardening cycle helps me handle the darker and colder months of winter.
Gardens are a space for slowing down, especially in winter. The slower pace of being in a garden or outdoor space during colder months allows our nervous systems to reset while allowing the garden to also reset before the next planting cycle.
I yearn for a wintering garden, for what it has to offer me in lessons and reflection as well as for what it needs for nature’s own wellbeing. Gardens hold such great therapeutic benefits; it is a symbiotic relationship of sorts. The combination of physical activity, possible social interaction, and exposure to nature all create a beneficial impact on our mental and physical health.
Garden therapy is nothing new. According to “Horticulture as Therapy: Principles and Practice” by Sharon Simson (Routledge, 2008), one of the earliest records of horticulture therapy was in ancient Egypt when court physicians prescribed palace garden walks for mental health. The therapeutic benefits of garden spaces matter even more with increased climate anxiety: One in 10 Americans report symptoms of climate anxiety, according to a 2022 study by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Eco-distress is a normal human response to climate injustices, and is a sign of connection.
Here are three takeaways on what a winter garden shows us about living in a world of crisis.
The winter garden teaches us the benefits of rest
Perennials need a period of dormancy to prepare for growth. Annuals die once frost hits but often not without going to seed to prepare for their next cycle. Trees and shrubs require a certain amount of cold weather and dormant hours. Many native flower seeds also need a cold duration for stratification in order to have healthy germination come spring and summer.
When those dormancy cycles are disrupted for too long by unseasonably warm weather, the ripple effect could be huge. In my own backyard, I noticed during the recent spate of near 60 degree days that a bud on my apple tree is opening. Ouch.
Rest is a requirement for our gardens as well as for our own nervous systems. Connecting that rest to outside time, the American Psychological Association points to massive benefits to our health both in calming the brain and body as well as perking up cognition. While walking through an open outdoor space or garden is enjoyable, humans experience added benefits when they connect more intentionally.
In January, I launched a new gardening and climate workshop series, called Embodied Climate Action, currently offered with the Gardens on Spring Creek in Fort Collins. In our first of seven workshops, we explored what a wintering garden can teach us in a world of urgency and climate crisis.
I sent participants to wander in the gardens during a segment of our afternoon. One participant had come in expressing anger and sadness over climate crisis. By the end of our session together, she commented on how resting among the soil had shifted the anger into its truer form of grief.
The winter garden teaches us to embrace seasonal living
Part of appreciating rest is an invitation to embrace more seasonal living. A Gallup poll shows that the majority of Americans prefer spring, then summer, then fall, and coming in last and least desired, winter. While that may look different for us here along the Front Range, we still are a society who love the flowery, showy growth of spring and summer.
By skipping over winter — or when we are forced to miss winter in part due to climate crisis — we miss the intentional slowdown of living seasonally. If as gardeners, we were to extend the growth season, we might risk draining resources faster, increase the need for artificial nutrients, and even require an altered environment or structures. While there was a time in my own gardening life that I longed for a greenhouse to do this very thing, I now crave the garden downtime that winter offers here in Colorado.
A workshop participant reframed winter as an invitation to cultivate indoor practices that tie together the bounty of summer to the slow of winter, such as turning dried herbs from last year’s garden into herb salts and teas. As a beekeeper, I used some downtime this winter to make candles out of the saved wax of last summer.
In no time, we will all be shifting outdoors for a spring prep and cleanup. Gardening, whether in the active or restful stages, can help us flow more with nature’s cycles, benefiting our own health as well as Earth’s by inviting in more sustainable practices.
The winter garden teaches us to hold critical hope
The beauty found in wintering gardens is hard to see when we are enmeshed in the hustle and noise of the world. It is only when slowing down that we can see and feel that though the world is brown, it is in rest, not dead.
After our workshop discussion on how nature and community benefit eco-distress and climate anxiety, I sent participants out with a prompt to allow their attention to be drawn to anything that delighted them or connected to their experience of climate anxiety. A couple of workshop participants found themselves sitting with the barren, sleeping soil, realizing that it still was active. Adapted perennials will have extended their root systems below the wintering soil’s frost line.
Soil is such a wonderful metaphor for hope. As anyone who has ever put a seed into the soil and nurtured its growth knows, the mere act is one of hope and faith. A wintering garden teaches us to hold critical hope for spring and new growth — new ways of gardening and living in climate emergency.
Wintering gardens offer a space of connection and reflection. A warm, sunny winter day offers us validation in our shared nature and climate experience and connection to each other and the gardens.
Get out and embrace this season of winter and rest.
