Fun and responsibility: In the garden

I was recently encouraged to do gardening as part of my therapy. Together we became familiar with the vegetable and herb beds. We were given a small rake and a pickaxe – and a few other tools whose names I didn’t know. Our job was to prepare the soil in the beds so that we could then plant seeds in the soil that we had made fertile again.

So we started working on the beds with our slightly too small tools and with little guidance – that is, pulling out the weeds with the roots that were attached to them if possible and filling a wheelbarrow with the remains, which we, As soon as it was full, it should be put into the compost bin.

I scratched and scraped and chipped aggressively at the root-riddled soil, and soon I had filled a wheelbarrow—and then another, and another, and another. At some point I stood, out of breath, in front of my bed, which was now free of weeds, but at the same time didn’t necessarily look potent enough to provide a home for new, healthy plants. It looked rather barren and chaotic at the same time – the color of the earth was almost gray.

I looked around to see what the others had made, because in the frenzy of filling ten wheelbarrows and carrying them away, I had completely forgotten that I wasn’t alone in the garden. I saw that the others had only half filled their first wheelbarrow so far. They worked the earth carefully, systematically and sensitively, one of them singing a song. It almost seemed like they were massaging the beds. The other people’s beds seemed much less gray than my own – they were well dug, even and loose. It was obvious that although I was much faster, the others, with their level-headed dedication, had worked much more sustainably and effectively.

I thought about whether there was a connection between gardening and our employment relationships: Did the others, as permanent employees, have the leisure to work on the bed for the sake of the bed because they were paid based on the hours they spent, while I, as an artist, was always paid only by product, by wheelbarrow so to speak? I stood undecided in front of my bed and listened to the others humming.

A garden is always an attempt at taming. With a lot of work, Flora is brought into a shape – often into a shape that is supposed to have the appearance of chance. The garden is a place of pleasure, a place of longing, desire, but also distinction. It is a place of seeing and being seen.

Sometimes, depending on the nature of the garden, it is also a place where you can get lost, in thought – or quite literally, for example in one of the labyrinths that you sometimes find in castle gardens. And of course the idea of ​​the garden also contains paradise, in relation to which we are per se displaced people. That means: our separation from the animal, the beginning of nudity and shame.

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