What a beautiful essay on gardening. Talks about flow, the connection to nature, and something called attention restoration therapy.
Gardening is a relaxing and rewarding hobby. It provides an opportunity to escape and reflect away from our daily routines, and to relish the intensity of fascination. But it is more than that. The psychological power of gardening derives from the garden’s reach beyond the here and now. My contention is that different and complex forms of time are continuously interacting through the garden and the gardener. Past, present and future collide in a flowerbed, enticing the gardener to lose themselves in the pleasure of ‘flow’. Let someone else worry about lunch.
Today I spent a whole morning and some part of the afternoon on maintenance in my apartment garden, and it hardly felt like any substantial time had passed.