Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia

Occasional essays by Christa Watters, Extension Master Gardener
Photos © Christa Watters

Gardening in the Time of Pandemic

Phlox paniculata (summer phlox)

Gardening is a lot like life, as I’ve often noted in this space. It is one long lesson in patience, and the gardener is often beset with setbacks and frustrations. Weather, climate, insect or disease invasion, and our choices of what to plant are all the stuff of ordinary garden dilemmas. Yet gardening also rewards us with unexpected joys to counter the tough times. If we’ve gardened more than a year or two, we recognize that change is a constant, and we accept it as the background to our joys and sorrows. But this year of Covid-19 has been extraordinary in a whole different way and to a whole other degree. The rules for coping with the pandemic have caused some of us frustrations of access to our demo-garden spaces, or limited our usual plant shopping habits. But those very things have offered us a different opportunity: We have been reminded that the garden is not just the taker, the place that eats up our time and labor; it is also a much- needed source of joy, a giver of balm to the soul in a time of worry, stress, and isolation. And it has reminded us that often the garden matures all on its own, without much need for intervention from us.

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