My Endeavor

Hello there! Today, I want to share a personal journey that led me to discover the incredible therapeutic benefits of gardening, especially for doctors or busy professionals like myself. I’m a 42-year-old female physician with a bustling family life, and trust me, gardening wasn’t always my cup of tea. In fact, I used to tease my parents for their love of gardening, claiming that buying celery from the store was faster and cheaper than growing it ourselves. Oh, how wrong I was!

My foray into gardening began as a sporadic endeavor, more akin to a plant hospice than a garden. I’d pick up beautiful flowering plants from the nursery, shower them with love (and maybe a bit too much water), only to watch them peacefully wilt away. It wasn’t until my son turned 2.5 years old that I decided to introduce him to the wonders of growing easy vegetables from seeds. Little did I know that this would be the start of a life-changing journey.

In the summer of 2013, life threw its fair share of stressors at me—work challenges, personal struggles, and the loss of precious lives close to me. In those turbulent times, I turned to gardening as a coping mechanism. The feeling of soil between my fingers was strangely soothing, and watching plants grow filled me with hope. If a plant withered, I saw it as a valuable lesson in resilience, troubleshooting what went wrong, and starting anew. My persistence paid off, and by the summer of 2014, I had the most beautiful vegetable garden. Gardening had become my prescription for wellness.

Cordially,