How Nature Gets into Your Soul

A reflection on gardening and raising kids who love trees & water & plants

On a hot day with the sun baking the driveway, the plants, and our heads, a garden tour would normally not be the first thing planned when it’s 93 degrees mid-afternoon.

But fueled by guacamole and icy agua frescas, my son and I made the effort to get up north just past the boundaries of Seattle to go to the Innis Arden neighborhood to see my friend Dana’s garden.

Dana’s garden is divided up into “rooms”; the closest thing to compare it to are themes that flow from one to another in a way that shows skillful planning and curation along with a love for plants and good views.

Purple is one of Dana’s favorite colors and certainly factors in as a heavyweight in the front yard. I don’t think you can have too much purple (skillfully selected and blended with the right complementary colors, of course). We progressed to the side yard, and saw a shade garden, a “hot” garden with yellow and red flowers. A highlight was the meditation garden, complete with a labyrinth, a clematis-covered archway and many white flowers. The white flowers are a frequent motif in gardens for their magical ability to almost seem to glow at dusk!

Hydrangea “Fairytrail Bride”

My son factored into the conversation when at some point he asked about the possibility of coyotes in the woods surrounding Dana’s property. When we sat down in the patio area, he asked about the very red coleus growing in a pot.

“What made your attention get drawn to that particular plant?” I asked him. Dana grabbed a leaf and handed it over to him. As kids a wont to do, he not only held the leaf but noted its texture—like velvet—and then got to work slowly ripping it apart. “There’s a green layer inside!” he noted, followed by “why”? Dana talked about chlorophyll, and how plants can make their own food. We stuck our arms out for a second, imagining what it would be like to make food for ourselves.

My kids were raised in Seattle, but are moving to San Francisco.

I asked Dana—a Seattle native who then moved to New York City and worked in Manhattan before returning back to Seattle—what might be going through my son’s head. How he might be feeling.

Dana paused before answering, and mentioned how she could have benefitted from being more in the environment, in nature during her years in the Big Apple.

But what stuck in my head far more was when she said the following:

“the blue and green will never leave him”.