Outdoor living and being "in the garden" might seem synonymous. We think of outdoor living as an extension of indoor activities and design and build kitchens, spas, and fireplaces into our patios and ramadas. Worry that we are becoming an obese nation adds lap pools, tennis, basketball, and volleyball courts to our play spaces. These are all useful additions to our homes, and if surrounded by plants, they are literally “in the garden.”

Consider yet another bridge between indoors and out that goes a step further in expanding our living space. A garden shower is a convenience near a spa or swimming pool. But beyond that, the experience of showering in a screened niche open to the sky is exhilarating. Sun-warmed water washes over you, then trickles through paving stones to grow the fragrant thyme beneath your feet. Adding to the revelry, a dozen or more thumbnail-sized dusky blue butterflies might puddle in the moist soil at the far reaches of the shower’s flow. Butterflies “puddle” in moist soil gleaning minerals dissolved in the water. Like the tiny dusky blues, we find an invisible yet palpable source of nourishment in the open air. There is a hunger that is hard-wired into our human nature. We need to spend time outdoors. Time spent in nature restores us, invigorates us, whets our appetites, and makes us sleep more soundly.

As pleasant as time in the garden might be, the path to creativity and personal fulfillment may begin just outside our comfort zone. Insights shared by Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, blow the garden gates wide open. Louv’s hypothesis is that baby boomers are the last generation to have grown up playing in semiwild places near their childhood homes. Many boomers had an ongoing experience of the endless wonder of nature at a pivotal time in their lives, and wonder is thought to be an important impetus for lifelong learning. More kids today may have an intellectual understanding of the Amazon rainforest than ever before, Louv points out as a positive, but they may have little direct interaction with the ecosystem they actually live in, which is certainly a regrettable and reversible gap in their experience. Limiting the notion of outdoor living to civilized pursuits a few steps out our back doors seriously curtails opportunities to interact with living things beyond our normal routine. If our garden is mostly for looking at, even if the plants attract butterflies and hummingbirds, we are still only passive observers of life.

 

 

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