Garden Your Way Into the Holidays

Life in the Pacific Northwest garden in mid-fall is gorgeous. Full stop. But, looking at your own tired summer garden, you may not feel that “full-stop” energy. However, I’m pretty sure you have some beauty hiding in plain sight all around you right now.

Everything may look dead and scraggly, or you might see colors bursting around you. Whatever the case may be, take the opportunity to embrace what you have.

How to Enjoy Your Summer Space Into Fall

Put your phone down (or at least in your pocket) and take a walk around your space, whether it’s a sprawling landscape or pots on a patio. Tap into your senses; what can you see, touch, taste, smell or hear in your space?

What do you see that you can celebrate from the summer growing season? What’s still holding on? What’s long past? How can you best express a moment of gratitude for any of those things (and more) in that moment?

As much as tending to an outdoor space is about productivity and growth, I believe it’s also about simple actions that ground us to the world around us. 

While expressing gratitude and celebration may feel out of your comfort zone, I encourage you to take a moment to try it – and then try it again.

There’s no doubt that there are (or were) moments of success and visible flourishing, as well as moments of struggle and apparent failure; so it goes. 

In my own space, I’m celebrating the new fence we had built around the front yard by my friend Michael and his powerful team at K2 Landscaping. 

Adding it provided hours of comfort, safety and productivity for our family, as well as the opportunity to add some new landscaping and beauty to our corner of the neighborhood. 

If you think of nothing else when you think of your garden space, I hope you’ll think of it as a laboratory. You plan and you test and you try. You see the results. 

You then have the opportunity to try and test and tweak again. I try to remember this information as I look at, and think of, my own space, as well as when I’m coaching a client in their own space. It’s all an experiment.

Gardening Your Way Into the Holidays

As we slide into the fall and winter holidays, here’s another idea for you: You can use what’s out in your yard, your neighborhood or in your region to create free and beautiful decorations (responsibly and respectfully, of course).

 Here are a few ideas for you:

• Create a dried flower bouquet. Whether you’re going for a creepy Halloween bouquet of dead flowers for that party or to spook those trick-or-treaters.
  •  If you’re trying to create a harvest-themed dried bouquet, the options are endless. I love to use dried yarrow, echinacea, grasses and twigs for our mantle in November!
• Did you grow corn in your garden, or do you know someone who did? Place those tall stalks upon your front door step. You can also often find this at local stores or farms for a low price.
• Use your bounty! Did you grow pumpkins or squash this year? Whether I grew pumpkins and other winter squash for eating or for decor, I try to use it as decoration throughout the fall and into the holidays. 
  • Those oranges, golds and greens remind me of the gifts of summer for months afterward.
  • Pro tip: make sure they stay cool enough, and don’t place any you’re planning to consume too close to a heat source or on a heated floor. I have stories to tell of slow-heated pumpkins…

As you’ve read through these ideas, which one resonated with you? Try one or all! 

As the late fall and winter months come, I’ll continue to share ideas, resources and tips to consider as you take a break from active gardening and move towards further celebration, rest and planning. I can’t wait to share more with you! 

Here’s to continual gratitude and celebration!