Your Creativity Is a Garden

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Y’all know I love an extended art metaphor, 😉 so here’s one more to consider. What if your creative practice is like a garden?

• The more you put into it, the more it grows

• It needs sunshine (energy) and water (sustenance)

• It can feed you (creatively and emotionally)

• The process is sometimes slow but worthwhile

• Something new can always spring up overnight

• You may need to learn some new skills along the way

• It can teach you about the randomness of the world

• It can be a place of solace when things are hard

Your Soothing Hobbies Are Creative Input

The things writers fill their lives with that aren’t writing often influence their writing in surprising ways. Writing is a part of a writer’s larger life. For some, that means it gets done at five in the morning before the kids are awake. For others, writing happens into the wee hours of the night when their family is asleep. And for others, writing is like tending a garden: It happens slowly, bit by bit, growing with them.

I love plants, and I’ve always had some around my house. Right now, my tiny garden is just about 10×15 feet. In it, I’ve got a mix of edible plants and my favorite: succulents that love the Houston humidity and Texas heat. I’ve not always been successful as a gardener. I’ve killed a lot of plants in my day. My most successful plants are my orchids. They only bloom once a year. The rest of that time, they’re dormant, but when they do come alive, they bud out in beautiful colors.

But lately, I’ve been moving more slowly after having surgery this summer. I’m not able to do my normal gardening, but I can still poke at it bit by bit. The same goes for my creative practice of art and writing. The joy is still there, and so are the words. They’re just in a different season.

That’s why my August workshop at my art studio, MERGE, is all about rock painting. Coming back from a medical leave, my brain is slowly waking up again. I wanted something that seemed easy and fun, plus entirely un-writing-related. But the more I think about it, the more I realize I can learn a lot about being creative from my garden.

Sip + Create Rock Painting for Summer Gardens (+ Plant Swap!)
DATE: Saturday, July 11th, 2026
TIME: 4:30PM - 6:30PM
LOCATION: Merge Art Studio, 2000 Nance St. Studio B-126

​Unwind with a refreshing drink and get creative as you transform ordinary rocks into colorful garden art. In this fun, beginner-friendly workshop, you'll learn simple painting techniques and design ideas to create unique decorations that add personality and charm to your summer garden. No experience needed—all supplies included!

Also, participants are encouraged to bring a plant (or clipping) to swap with their fellow gardeners.

What Kind of “Gardener” Are You?

I’m an avid composter. My spouse jokes that my colony of soldier fly larva who live in my compost bin are my “little babies”. I let them process my compost and keep a bucket or two underneath to make compost tea. I mix it with water and spray it over my plants. It’s a messy, stinky process that always satisfies me. I’m a visceral writer too, often writing from personal experience, and my gardening practice reflects my creative style. I like to discover what I create as I go.

I’m a bit of a chaos gardener. I often find seed packets at plant swaps (anything free or zero-waste!) and throw them willy-nilly into my garden bed. I’ve been known to throw seeds into my compost bin, only to find with joy that I’ve got a pumpkin or squash growing alongside a blueberry bush later on. I often choose plants that can fend for themselves. I like the discovery of gardening: what goes well, what fails.

As a creative person, you become familiar with failure. It feels life or death: This Is My Art. But in a garden? Oh well, the seeds didn’t take. The plant died. The grass got a little yellow. You can always start over again.

How long would you keep failing at a hobby before you gave up? Well, I guess that depends on how much you love it. They say: There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments. What if, like a gardener, you could see art “failure” as trial and error instead?

Architect William Kent said that “all gardening is landscape painting.” There’s an art to the garden—both in how landscaping values height and shape and variation, but also in how personal the garden is to the gardener. In one garden, you might find entirely flowers. In another, only food and microgreens. Both have their own value. One feeds the soul and the other feeds the body.

Art is like that—sometimes it exists purely to feed the soul and be beautiful. But at other times, art can be revolutionary. It can exist to change minds. Or, it can be simple and soft—existing just to feed the creator.

To plant a garden is to have hope for the future. For me, there’s a solace in slowing down. In a world that wants constant attention (why do there have to be so many emails?), a garden asks you to be there tomorrow. And art does that, too. Making art says: I believe in myself. Or: one day I’ll show this art to someone. Or, maybe: what I love matters.

In the end, we all want our art-gardens to succeed and thrive. Hope and vision exist in both. We hope the plants will grow. We hope someone will read our book. We can see the garden of our dreams—lush and vibrant. We dream up art that will inspire others.

The only wrong way to start a garden or a creative practice is to never start at all. There’s a Chinese proverb that says the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago.

So what trees are you going to plant today?

Prompts for Creative Gardeners

Incorporate Art Into Your Garden

If you’re a gardener but you’ve never incorporated art into your garden, this is your chance. Here are some ideas for making your garden more artistic:

• Buy or make a rain drum so you can “listen” to your garden

• Incorporate handmade signage and labels

• Paint rocks with words you love and work them into your garden outlines

• Buy weird art that’s weatherproof and hang it in your garden

Incorporate Nature Into Your Art

If you don’t have your own garden, visit one in your neighborhood or city. Sit quietly with a notebook or sketchbook (or your camera) and simply listen. Journal about what you hear and observe. Take pictures of the plants that you love and make a note of their names or look them up later. Don’t worry about whether you’re doing it right—just take in the experience. Consider it creative input: Doing something peaceful and non-writing related is a comfort to the soul. Consider how you might incorporate your observations about nature into your work. Or just take notes to come back to later.

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