When his flowerbeds were overflowing, my father would sometimes pick a bouquet for me before school. “Pass these out to your friends,” he would say, knowing how hard it was for his shy girl to start a conversation. And so I would. Peonies, geraniums, lilies, columbines, irises, and lilac boughs. The response from my high-school peers was always a kind of bewildered delight. “I can never figure out if you’re a hippy or a Christian,” a member of the football team once told me.
This was back at the turn of the century (I’m class of ‘02), when my classmates and I were living the kind of high school life that Gen Z pines for.
Things were already falling apart back then—Columbine and 9/11 both happened during my four years of high school—and today it goes without saying that we live in a tragically divided, fatally lonely age. The powers and principalities severing the ties that bind have done their work well. Passing out flowers isn’t going to fix what is broken.
Or will it? I’m raising my children in this world, and I so I think a lot about how to make sure they have a world to inhabit: not a chaos of conflicting voices and virtual relationships, but a coherent society where they can love, work, strive, serve, and do all the other human things they were made to do. And so I teach them how to introduce themselves to strangers in the grocery-store checkout line. I let them sit with their friends’ families at church. My eldest’s first “aunts and uncles” were all homeless folks. Daily I tell them, “we pray that God will make us menders and builders, repairers of the breach” (Isaiah 58:12).
In the 20+ years since I passed out flowers by my locker, I’ve had a lot of experience trying to mend the breaches around me. I used to talk about this work in terms of “building community,” but that language doesn’t feel urgent enough anymore. People are literally dying of loneliness and anxiety, buried under the rubble of shattered families, decaying institutions, and ineffective churches. Where do we even begin?
Turns out, handing out flowers is actually one of the best ways to begin the much-needed work of repair. Exactly one year ago I wrote about how a front porch is the best place to begin practicing hospitality, but our house doesn’t actually have a front porch.
Instead, we have an enormous garden, and it is hands-down the most joyful, effective tool I have EVER used to build and strengthen relationships. My children, husband, and I love one another more deeply when we play and work together there. The garden gives us a place to meet, know, and enjoy our friends better. And, crucially, the garden provides a gateway to new relationships within and beyond our neighborhood.
I have lots of stories about how our garden has helped us build relationships. Let me know in the comments if you want me to tell some of those stories, because for now I want you to just believe that I’m telling the truth so I can skip to The Instructions.
Yes, instructions. Because I want you to start a garden. Today, if possible (what better way to start the sweet month of May?). Before the next weekend is over, at the latest. Lord willing, your crop will be neighbors.
Here’s what you need to do:
Select your space
Your most important consideration here is to choose a space that is visible and accessible to passers-by. Front yards, apartment balconies, pots on the front steps of your townhouse. Don’t fret if you don’t have a yard or balcony. My apartment complex in grad school gave my group of friends permission to grow a garden in an unused bit of land between the building and the swimming pool.
Decide what to plant
Your decision about what to plan will be governed first by where your garden is. If you have a nice sunny spot you have lots of choices, and can move on to the suggestions below. But perhaps you have a sunny backyard and a shady front yard? Two gardens, obviously! Plant your tomatoes in the back, but don’t give up on establishing a garden for “growing neighbors” in the front. There are always plants that will grow in the shade, even if you have to do some research to find what is best in your region.
From there, make sure you plant things that are going to draw you out into your garden. If you’re going to grow a crop of neighbors, you have to actually be outside when the pass by. Plant things you like—maybe that’s food to eat, or maybe it’s your favorite flower in seven different colors. It doesn’t really matter so long as it animates your joy. You might also think about planting things other people like, so that you have things to give. Even though I still chide my husband for giving away all our sweet potatoes last year (and I mean ALL), it remains true that offering to give something from your garden can supercharge an encounter with a new neighbor. Finally, consider growing plants you need to process is some way. If you grow beans, you’ll need to shell them, after all. Why not invite a neighbor to join you, and then send her home with some of the food she helped prepare?
Commit to spending time in your garden.
Holy work must be committed to God, so offer up your garden, and the time you spend in it, to prayer. Your garden will give you plenty of active work as you establish it, but think carefully about how to spend ongoing time in your garden. If you are growing vegetables, you will soon have more than enough to do, weeding, pruning, harvesting, and more. If you grow dye plants, set up your dye pot and use them there in the garden. If you grow flowers, cut bouquets and be “a hippie or a Christian,” as you pass them out to those who walk by.
Be relentless in your friendliness.
Wave at every car that passes. Say hello to anyone on a morning jog. Ask the names of the walkers. Say hi to the children. Invite the old women to come in and see your roses.
There’s no guarantee that any of this will work. You might putter among your cabbages for years without making a single friend. But you certainly won’t meet any lonely neighbors if you stay inside. And if all you do is spend a few decades going out into a garden each day, feeling the dirt between your fingers and praying for God’s kingdom to come? Well, that’s holy work too.
Growing neighbors; I love it! My cosmos in the front yard have been cut and gifted many times to neighbors and friends; I think that no matter where we live, I will always grow cosmos. They thrive in poor soil and hot, dry temperatures, and the more you cut them, the more they grow. (There’s a metaphor in there somewhere). ☺️
Brilliant. I have yet to convince my husband of a front yard garden (maybe some flowers will do), but we will work with the garden we've got in the back, as well as #3 and 4. :)