Dreaming of Gardening

Interpretations and Growth thru Sustainable Practices

Recently a colleague of mine emailed me this image which immediately got me to thinking “what does it mean when we dream of gardening? How are those dreams interpreted?” I’ve had more than a few clients and friends relate to me that they occasionally dream about gardening and interacting with Mother Nature.

What I found when I googled dream interpretations was eye-opening, encouraging and all in all gave me a warmer inner feeling. I found that many of the aspects of my inner being that I strive to improve are indeed all relative to gardening, and/or improved by engaging in, or the success thereof, along with a failure or two.

Hey now, Nobody’s PERFECT.

To dream of a garden represents something meaningful that is developing in your life. Developing in new ways or growing as a person. You are cultivating or slowly growing some new area of your life. A garden may also reflect a learning experience or teaching others something that takes time. New ideas that take time to develop.

Garden Dreams, Development

One of the things I am seeing at that the moment about symbols and dreams is how beautifully they hold tremendous amounts of information and meaning. I am thinking at the moment about the soil, the garden – they are so rich in meaning. Whatever our forebears did, whether they were deceitful and lying or courageous and strong, whether they had honour or were cowards, whatever they did, and perhaps over time they did everything, their lives were the drama that brought us into being.

Their lives have given us the substance of our body and our personality. We are the heirs of that drama. What we grew from is what they left us. It was the heritage from the past. In dreams this is often represented as a piece of land, a garden. It was the piece of land – is the piece of land – that you inherited. Whatever that land might be, whatever its condition, that is what you have. Whether it is beautifully rich with orchards growing on it, or whether it is covered in rocks and brambles, that is your heritage. Bemoaning the condition or being proud of the condition doesn’t change it. The thing is to take up your tools and develop that land. Let us fertilise it. Let us honour it. We can make it rich. We can enrich it because it is the real stuff and has in it all the potentials of life. Because of that, as rocky or as thorny as it might be, we have all that we need. On that land we can let the tree of life grow.

Tony Crisp, Best Selling Author

To dream of planting a vegetable garden represents life situations where preparations or actions are being made to sustain you for the long term. If you pull weeds out of a vegetable garden it may reflect maintenance or polishing of some important area of your life that you have neglected for a while.

Planting a Garden, Rejuvenation

A dream of a gardener is about peace and quiet, and the harmony you desire. It can represent the unique understanding that it is important to maintain your own soul as you would tend to a beautiful garden. The weeds in a garden represent your trouble and challenges. A gardener tending their garden symbolizes tending to the challenges you face.

Of Being A Gardener, Harmony

All in all I realize that we are more like the plants that we dream about than we realize. Our bodies are capable of photosynthesis — the process where plants make their own food using sunlight. Our skin utilizes the sunlight to make one of the nutrients you need: vitamin D. Researchers estimate that a half hour in the sun can produce between 8,000 and 50,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D in your body, depending on how much your clothes cover and the color of your skin. Vitamin D is essential for literally hundreds of body functions — strengthening your bones and your immune system are just two of them.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says gardening is exercise. Activities like raking and cutting grass might fall under the category of light to moderate exercise, while shoveling, digging, and chopping wood might be considered vigorous exercise. Either way, working in a garden uses every major muscle group in the body. This fact won’t surprise anyone who’s woken up sore after a day of yardwork.

After all, when you build yourself; you are essentially “building an eco-system” – and that is part of our motto.

So I say “dream on!!!”

Read more about the Benefits of Gardening