Tend Your Inner Garden (Without Letting the Weeds Win)

Historically, if I could do something the hard way, I did it. If there was a path to being misunderstood, I was marching down it in hiking boots. And if there was a way to make life more difficult while desperately trying to make it easier… well, I usually managed to find it.

It was a bit like busting my backside to grow a beautiful garden, then trampling the tender buds while planting bindweed everywhere. If you’ve never tangled with bindweed, consider yourself blessed. That stuff is relentless — invasive, suffocating, and just when you think you’ve pulled it all up, one tiny root sprouts overnight like it’s mocking you.

And bramble? Don’t get me started. That thorny monster seeded itself deep when I was little, wrapping around everything, tearing at skin and spirit. Every time I thought I’d gotten rid of it, it reappeared with a vengeance, pretending it owned the place.

Of course, not every challenge in my life has been as toxic as bindweed or bramble. Sometimes they’ve been more like cheerful dandelions — bright, seemingly harmless, even useful in their way. But left unchecked, they can take over faster than a pack of distant relatives showing up on your doorstep with steamer trunks and no place else to go. Like your Aunt Marjory and Uncle Herbert, with their nine scruffy offspring fighting on the front lawn.

It’s a funny thing about weeds: they don’t all announce themselves as weeds. Some look like blessings at first. They offer quick colour, quick company, quick distraction. Only later do you realise they’re choking out the roses.

As a child, I was the seed of a rose bush planted in a hostile garden. As an adult, I’ve spent decades trying to dig out the weeds and nurture the plants I truly wanted. And like any gardener, I’ve learned that for every beautiful bloom, there will always be something invasive trying to crowd it out.

But here’s the good news: with time, patience, and practice, my brown thumb has grown greener. I’ve learned how to spot the weeds earlier, how to guard the soil, and how to give more sunlight to the flowers I want to see flourish.

And you know what? You’ve probably done the same. We’re all gardeners in our own way, hoeing and planting, weeding and watering, trying to create something beautiful while fending off the thistles, thorns, and the Aunt Marjorys of life.

The Power of Pausing

There’s one lesson gardening has taught me more than any other: sometimes the wisest thing you can do is stop. Not give up, not charge ahead. Just… pause.

Take your hands off the shovel. Put down the watering can. Stretch your back and sip something cold. And then really look at your garden.

What’s thriving?
What’s struggling?
What did you plant with the best intentions, only to realise it isn’t serving you after all?

It’s humbling, that moment of assessment. Maybe you discover that climbing jasmine you thought would be charming is actually strangling your roses. Or that mint you planted “just for tea” has colonised the entire continent. (We’ve all been there.)

In real life, this looks like stepping back to ask: Which parts of your healing are truly helping you bloom, and which are just busywork? Which relationships bring colour and joy, and which are leafy but lifeless?

That pause isn’t failure. It’s wisdom. It’s growth.

Smarter, Not Harder

For much of my life, I confused growth with effort. If I just tried harder, planted more, weeded longer, surely my garden would thrive. But that’s not how it works.

Sometimes growth happens in stillness — in observation, in patience. Sometimes it comes when we finally admit that what we planted years ago has withered, and we don’t need to replant it. Sometimes it’s when we recognise that we’ve been watering someone else’s dream all along.

That’s a hard truth. It means pulling up roots. It means composting old ideas and expectations. It means admitting that some things — or some people — we once loved are now just taking up space.

But there’s freedom in that, too. Because when you stop scattering seeds everywhere just because someone else told you to, you start planting with intention.

Becoming the Architect

At some point, you realise you’re not just the gardener anymore. You’re the architect of the landscape. You decide what stays, what goes, and what shape the whole garden will take.

Yes, life will always sneak in a bit of bindweed. But with patience and trust — in yourself, in the cycles of growth and rest — you’ll know what to do when it shows up.

So today, maybe take that pause. Look at your garden. Celebrate what’s blooming. Pull up what’s draining you. And remember: you’ve earned this messy, beautiful, evolving space.

It’s yours to shape, one choice at a time.