Composting Old Ideas: A Gardener’s Lesson in Learning and Unlearning

What gardening can teach us about change: a local writer reflects on outdated practices, new knowledge, and the value of staying open to learning.

COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTION

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.”

~ Maya Angelou

This quote, attributed to Maya Angelou, has always resonated with me in both gardening and in life. Working in veterinary medicine, I am used to learning about new research and much of what I learned in school is now entirely obsolete. So, too, are many of the things I learned as a new gardener.

As a novice, I observed gardens around me being raked to bare soil in the fall and again in the spring. I thought that everyone did it, so this must be the best way, and I did it too. I lovingly tended a buckthorn shrub for several seasons because I didn’t know what it was and thought that the berries were good for the birds.

As my interest in gardening has grown, so has my appreciation for how gardens are connected to the wider world, and how what we know about the world has changed. I look back on garden atrocities that I have committed and I cringe, but I simply did not know better.

On the surface, gardening sounds like a mild topic, but gardeners can be very opinionated passionate about how they care for their gardens.

Suggesting that a technique is no longer considered best practice becomes a deeply personal attack. Hinting that a beloved burning bush or barberry might be ecologically problematic is taken as a threat to their very existence.

These types of exchanges are unfortunately very common in the online space and can become very heated. It can be easy to become defensive when what we thought we knew is upended and it’s important to dig deeper and try to understand where those emotions are rooted.

Change can be uncomfortable and as beginners, we can be led astray. As we encounter new information that might be contrary to what we thought or did, we need to open our minds to the possibility that we might be, not necessarily wrong, but perhaps misguided.

I think we need to be careful that we don’t dig in on outdated garden practices simply because they feel comfortable.

If I had remained committed to my intense clean-ups and tending my buckthorn, I would never have learned about the incredible relationships between native plants and their pollinators.

As a group whose mission is grounded in evidence-based gardening education, I credit the Master Gardeners with introducing me to many new ideas and encouraging me to challenge what I thought I knew about gardening.

Even though this article is littered with garden metaphors, it strikes me that this advice is no longer just about the garden, is it?

I think that the most important lesson here is that some ways of working in the garden are better being composted. There is no shame in learning and adapting a growth mindset, approaching new information with openness and curiosity, and to blossoming in our newfound knowledge.

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