COVID-19 Gardening Gardening Health through gardening Horticultural Therapy

COVID Confinement Leads to Passion for Gardening

Here’s a charming message I received from a reader after she read the article Top 10 Reasons to Garden that appeared in this blog on March 7, 2021. 

Enjoy!

Hi Larry,

I just discovered your blog and I must comment here… 

I became a gardener last spring thanks to the pandemic lockdown. My mom, who had been tending our garden for 30 years, had eye surgeries last April and could not work in the garden. Also, she no longer enjoyed gardening and only saw it as a chore for the last few years. 

Then the lockdown here in Slovakia happened and I was stuck at home working from a home office with nowhere to go and not much to do. So, I looked around and saw an opportunity… And I never looked back! 

A year later I am in love with gardening more and more every day. I am now fully rejuvenating and re-landscaping my mom’s 0.3-acre garden that, it turns out, was quite tired and neglected. In the process, I’ve been giving myself a crash course on horticulture, making things tidy and beautiful again, bringing more life and color to our environment and, most importantly, I found incredible peace, joy and stress relief in working in the garden. 

While other people around me are stressing out and feeling a lot of anxiety around Covid-19, vaccinations, politics, etc., I am planning what to dig out and what to plant where and when. 

Gardening is the best therapy. It’s been almost exactly a year since I planted my first plant in the garden and I feel like a changed person—so much calmer, more productive, happy, proud of myself. I really recommend to anyone who has the tiniest plot of dirt around their house to plant something. It might change their life!

So happy I found your helpful blog, I will be reading it from now on.

Nad’a Clontz
Star Tura, Slovakia

Garden writer and blogger, author of 65 gardening books, lecturer and communicator, the Laidback Gardener, Larry Hodgson, passed away in October 2022. Known for his great generosity, his thoroughness and his sense of humor, he reached several generations of amateur and professional gardeners over his 40-year career. Thanks to his son, Mathieu Hodgson, and a team of contributors, laidbackgardener.blog will continue its mission of demystifying gardening and making it more accessible to all.

14 comments on “COVID Confinement Leads to Passion for Gardening

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  6. It is not just about confinement at home. Some people have been unable to work to earn money for groceries, so grew produce in their home gardens.

  7. Nice to hear from other novice gardeners. Really nice letter.

  8. Carole Hoffman

    Thanks for posting , Larry. I hope many others who are dealing with the heavy stress load our current times are creating for us have found salvation from the stress through gardening. For myself, although already a lover of gardening, the 1/2 mile trail my husband blazed through the woods around our 10 acres surrounding our home, as a way of keeping himself busy during the lockdown, has given me a much larger canvas to create my floral masterpiece. I’ve been busy as a bee and loving every minute of it! Perhaps you’ll feel inspired to write about creating woodland gardens? Thanks for your newsletter. I’ve learned so much from it!

  9. That’s for sharing. Such a lovely letter

  10. That about sums it up for all us gardening enthusiasts. Thanks for all your help and tips.

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