UPWARDS IN THE GARDEN
Call of the Wild | Budding Biophiles, Romantic Anthophiles, and Tree Hugging Nemophilists ~ All Nature-lovers at Heart
Appreciating the outdoors and gardening requires only practicality and the simplest form of admiration. But why stop there?
Mark Zuleger-Thyss
Oneness with Nature
If eating, sleeping, and living for gardening appeals to you, you might be a budding biophilic fanatic. Immersing yourself in gardens has countless benefits, yet why stop there?
Get outside and allow Nature to take you by the hand. Find a sense of the local terrain by listening to the earth, returning to wild ways, and foraging for appetizing edibles beyond your backyard.
Nevertheless, the Biophilic garden design movement offers ideas for restoring vitality without leaving the house. Although biophilic design often means bringing the outside world inside, biophilia is fundamentally about our human desire to connect with the natural world.
Lovers of the natural world—plants, trees, waterways, and forests—need no professional skill. These admirable amateurs love all things that move and grow for their own sake and know how to cherish them.
Appreciating gardening and foraging—wild, hidden, creeping, or cultivated plants—only requires practicality: getting outside to see where the adventure takes you, connecting to a place, and allowing the simplest form of admiration.
Merging The Indoors with the Outdoors
An oak tree strategically placed outside a window will make a bedroom feel enveloped by nature. This idea is only one of the many ways biophilic design can enhance your indoor spaces. The biophilic mindset attempts to counteract the effects of modern urban life by bringing nature into your space.
Adventure awaits You!
Tired of being boxed up within the confines of your four walls?
Consider foraging and incorporating new and wild foods into your everyday kitchen life. The goal of foraging is the journey, experiencing the sense of peace found outdoors, gathering foods like native berries and mushrooms, and eating things off the forest floor.
Look to the trees, hedges, and weeds for meals at the table. Go hunting for morel mushrooms. Find rose flower petals to crush and dry for homemade teas. Harvest walnuts before the squirrels do. Pick wild grapes and apples or listen to the sap on the maple trees run.
Craving Bitter Greens, Nuts, Wild Berries, or Mushrooms?
Need to escape to the wild? Desire space and clarity? Need to walk in the cool spring air or discover the open fields of summer? Forage for local foods that grow in your bioregion, and you will have a greater appreciation for plants whose roots are connected to the earth.
Eating foods like mulberry pie with ox-eye daisy tea and dandelions in salads from the trackless landscapes binds you to the terrain. Ingesting these bits of the land makes your local environment a part of you.
Reading the seasons and the uncultivated, native terrains around you develops your sense of wonder about the natural world. Seeking a connection to the countryside will bind you to these natural landscapes more profoundly.
Exploring Beyond the Backyard can Broaden and Transform You
Whoever you believe yourself to be, change can be found by simply strolling through a field of wildflowers. Gardeners, Biophiles, Anthophiles, and tree trunk hugging Nemophilists are all nature lovers.
Gardening is more than growing plants; it's a form of therapy. There is solace in the repetitive planting, watering, and pruning motions. These meditative acts help to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. Nurturing and watching a living plant grow can also be a tremendous source of pride and fulfillment.
An article in a garden magazine might move you to populate your interior spaces with uncommon indoor plants and trees. The desire to commune with other life forms in nature is called Biophilia, a term coined by the Harvard naturalist Dr. Edward O. Wilson. It describes what he saw as humanity's "innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes" and to be drawn toward nature, to feel an affinity for it, a love, a craving.
The blossoms of the pink hyacinth might prompt you to playfulness and beauty, bringing back memories of your mother, an avid Anthophile, a lover of flowers. Perhaps she was not so much for growing or analyzing them but just for enjoying them. And suddenly, you remember how she sought to pass this lifelong passion to you.
Maybe you are fond of forests and woodlands wandering through them after sunset. Visiting forests often and hugging trees might sound kooky, but you don't need to tell anyone. Nemophilist is an obscure word that has not been used for over 100 years, but go ahead, haunt the woods, and hug trees to your heart's desire. The term suggests a more artistic appreciation of trees and the simple delight forests provide.
If you like to commune with trees and are drawn to the rain, rain lover is another moniker to pin on your lapel. Some people fall in love with the rising sun, while others love the light cast by the moon and the stars, but you might prefer to strap on boots and a raincoat and splash around in puddles as you did as a child. If you love every aspect of rain, you have a unique personality called a Pluviophile.
Foraging for food, wandering woodlands under the moon, loving the beautiful smell of flowers, and surrounding yourself with plants make you a nature lover. Gardening and growing food is for the practical people among us. These individuals are the salt of the earth.
Foraging is about finding and enjoying flavorful edibles beyond your backyard. Start to value the wildness in your neighborhoods. Get outside and see where the adventure takes you. Turn your front lawn into a garden. Gather your friends to prepare meals and nourish your bodies with nutrient-dense wild foods.
Make space for the wild in your surroundings...
Discover feelings of belonging and find satisfaction in the moments of noticing. Awaken your senses and feel alive being outside.
And above all, embrace the wildness in you!
Follow Nature… Wherever She may Lead You!
© 2024, Mark Zuleger-Thyss | Garden of Healing, LLC
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