I am going to get into so much trouble for suggesting this and I really don’t have any statistical ground to make such a claim, just my own crude observation and the results of many inner debates.
I am of the view that anyone who hates gardening, gets no pleasure from watching things grow, or doesn’t enjoy relaxing in the midst of sweet smelling flowers and healthy green vegetation somehow has lost touch with who and what they are.
Since Eden, as a species, the not so humble homo sapien has hunted and gathered and general got it’s little apposing thumbs dirty. In more recent times, since we communally formed into the ‘more than aware’ creatures that we are today, we harnessed nature and nurture and developed crops.
Personally, I don’t think it is possible to breed out our gardening gene. It is hard coded in us all.
We are now, more than ever aware of our species impact on the environment. It can leave us feeling that we are nothing much higher than a complex viral infection - slowly eating away at this beautiful world that we live.
As a Christian, I believe that we were created to be stewards of nature and that our ‘dominion’ is nothing more than an ‘ability’ - we can manipulate nature either for good or evil.
Humanity has such a great potential. We can balance the growth of many a species of plant and animal – cutting back on the over-dominant and nurturing the endangered.
When we think of ancient woodlands, many of us have visions of the Forest of Fangorn as depicted in Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings‘. In reality, if left to there own devices, trees will grow to nothing more than over stretched ‘lolly pops’ – tall and spindly with very little strength or green growth. A tree would only live for a century or so before being blown down and becoming food for woodlice.
Trees need to be tended, thinned out and supported. These days it is a little known fact that with a little help from us humans, a tree can become almost immortal – living for many centuries if not a thousand years.
We do have a great potential and all the talk of ‘embrasing your innerself’ – forget that, just get gardening!