The Sensory Garden: Finding Peace Through Plants

Finding peace, contentment, and joy in everyday life becomes easier when we connect with nature through gardening and intentionally incorporate more plants into our diets. Plants engage our senses, lift our spirits, and provide enormous health benefits that support both mental and physical wellbeing.

• Transitioning to a sunnier yard has allowed for beautiful flowering plants like hydrangeas, gardenias, peonies, and foxglove
• Inheriting fruit trees and bushes has brought unexpected abundance with peaches, cherries, figs, plums, and pomegranates
• Growing plants benefits mental health by lifting spirits and creating joy
• Preparing fruits and vegetables immediately after shopping makes healthy eating more convenient
• Finding the right balance of plants and protein is key to a healthy lifestyle
• Staying curious about nature helps maintain wonder and may spark new interests

Keep growing something—even if it's just a small succulent on your desk—to experience the joy of nurturing life and discover peace through connecting with nature.

To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Create Harmony

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Welcome back to the Create Harmony podcast. So in this place, we are all about setting an intentional rhythm. We like to talk about how we can savor life's blessings, and we're learning how to use our imagination as a way of listening to God. Do you want to find more peace and contentment in life? Well, if that's the case, you'll probably find a lot here that you love, and if you like to be creative and fun, there's a place for you here as well. In this place, we'll take a few minutes to celebrate those everyday joys and to remind ourselves how to notice goodness that is all around us.

Speaker 1: 0:43

This is episode 125, and I'm your host, sally Burlington. So today's conversation is going to be about plants, and if you've been around for a while, you probably know that I love to grow things. I had quite a few houseplants. We talked about that, some during our winter well-being series. I like to talk about my garden outside during the growing season. I've just got a lot of plants and I like to talk about them. You might not be as into plants as I am, but maybe my joy of finding everyday joys and growing things will spark something in you and it will give you a smile. So last week we talked about herbs and ways you can grow them, different types of herbs, how we use them, and we discussed the ways that herbs create a multi-sensory experience so you can taste herbs, you can smell them, you can touch them. We said you can't really hear herbs, or maybe you can, but I don't really hear my herbs. But other than that, we use all the other senses and that's kind of cool thing about having a plant that sparks all of the senses, almost all of the senses. So in this house, in the house we're in now we've only been in this house for not quite two years, but we are growing lots of things, not just herbs. We have a more sunny yard here. We were used to that house we lived in before had a shadier yard, so we're used to growing a lot of greenery and shade plants but not flowers, because flowers need sun in order to bloom. So this new house has lots of sun and we are able to have blooming things all around us in our yard and that just makes me so happy. So things that we've planted. When we rebooted our backyard and did all the landscaping around it, around our new pool, we planted quite a few hydrangeas. Because we live in the south and we love our hydrangeas down here and we also have gardenias. They are all in full bloom and they are multi-sensory as well, because gardenias are beautiful. Their white blooms are so beautiful, but also they smell, and you can smell the perfume of gardenias all across my backyard. So you're using two senses right there.

Speaker 1: 2:55

This year I planted some peonies. I've always wanted peonies that they're the big fluffy blooms. You know they have these gorgeous big lacy, fluffy blooms. You know they have these gorgeous big lacy, fluffy blooms and I've always wanted to grow them. But again, they don't really grow well in the shade and I didn't have anywhere to put them. So we have some peonies. I planted them this spring, planted a salmon colored one and white and a yellow and a pale pink. They're probably not going to get a lot of blooms on them this year because we planted them, you know, a few weeks ago and I think that the blooming season for peonies is maybe waning right now, so we may not get too many blooms this year, but next year we're going to have beautiful peonies and I want to bring them in the house and enjoy their beauty.

Speaker 1: 3:40

One thing I've been loving this year is that we planted foxglove, and foxglove it's like a spike, a long straight stem, and on that stem are all sorts of these little trumpet shaped blossoms. It's like a variety of covered in little trumpet shaped blossoms. Ours are like a light lavender and white has a little speckle on it, and they're so beautiful and hummingbirds love them. We're trying to. We haven't gotten a lot of hummingbirds so far because I'm sure they didn't want to come into a massive construction zone, but hopefully, as our foxglove is out there blooming, some hummingbirds will find their way to us and we are just loving those blooms. They're just so pretty that we put them in their pots. We have a lot of like potted containers around the edge of our porch going out to our pool, and that's where we're growing our foxglove and they've just brought me so much joy.

Speaker 1: 4:34

So I've shared before that this yard was owned by some people. The people that lived here before us had bees. They were beekeepers and we don't have bees. The bees moved on with the people that lived here, but because they kept bees they had planted a lot of fruit trees. So we have all these fabulous fruit trees.

Speaker 1: 4:52

In our yard we have a peach tree and it is so covered in peaches that one of the limbs is about to split and break. I mean, there are peaches. They're pretty tiny, they're little, little tiny peaches and they're a little bit sour. I haven't cracked the code with that yet, but they're everywhere, so I'm going to have to come up with some, you know, peach jam or peach cobbler or all sorts of delicious peach treats. We also have a cherry tree and usually we get lots of cherries. This year we haven't seen quite as many, but usually it was covered in these bright, shiny red cherries.

Speaker 1: 5:24

We have a fig tree and there are so many figs on it right now. It's got these big green figs Right now. They're pretty hard, so it'll take a few more weeks before they completely ripen, but they're lots and lots of figs. So I look forward to some goat cheese and a cracker with some fig. And yum, yum, yum.

Speaker 1: 5:43

There's a plum tree in the front yard. It has these tiny little I mean like the shape of maybe the size of a lima bean little tiny plums, and it gets plums all over it because the tree is still really small too, but they're pretty bitter. Also, you got to add a little honey and mix with that to make the plums good. But the thing I one of the things I'm really excited about I've shared this before is that we have a pomegranate shrub. It's not really a tree, it's a shrub. It's really taller than my head at this point. It's been there a long time and it has lots and lots of blooms and some of the blooms are now going from being a blossom into like forming into what will become a pomegranate. Last fall we got about six pomegranates off of that tree and they were delicious. They were full and juicy and tons of little pomegranate seeds inside. So maybe we'll get even more this year, but it's awesome.

Speaker 1: 6:34

I would have never thought to plant a pomegranate, but we are the beneficiaries of that. There's also a little grape arbor on the side of our yard where they were growing some grapes. The vines that they had maybe were a little bit struggling, but they're still alive. But they weren't really thriving. But my husband added a new vine. It's a muscadine grape and it is really growing. It doesn't have grapes on it yet and we've never grown grapes before, so we have no idea how to do that. I don't know what's supposed to happen there, but the leaves are growing. We so far have grown a lot of grape leaves, so we'll see if we ever get any fruit. We might have to dial that in a little bit more in order to get fruit.

Speaker 1: 7:14

So that's pretty fun and being surrounded by these plants and things that are growing during the growing season, it's really beneficial to my mental health. It lifts my spirits, it makes me smile. In addition to all of that, I think I shared last time or maybe in a previous episode, that kind of my motto. One of my mottos to take good care of myself is eat more plants, and it helps a lot, like on the years that I had a garden, a raised bed garden. That really helps because you grow those beautiful fruits and vegetables in your garden. Then you bring them in and you want to eat them. Like when there's a juicy red tomato on the vine, it's tempting to want to eat it. This year we've scaled that back because we're having some issues with our garden, so we just have an herb garden this year. So I'm going to have to go to the farmer's market and get things to eat that other people have grown but still eat more plants.

Speaker 1: 8:07

I heard one time I listened to a speaker about you know longevity and aging well, and he said that one of the secrets to good health is varying the number of plants you eat, and I think they said you should try to eat at least 30 plants a day, 30 different plants, and when I first heard the number 30, I mean I thought, wow, that's pretty daunting. I don't. There's no way I'll eat 30 plants in a day. But if you think about it, you can do that, because that includes nuts and includes berries and includes herbs that you might sprinkle on the top of your salad. It probably includes putting some infused plants in your water. I mean, you can get the plants in in lots of different ways and get that variety, but thinking towards variety is helpful. It sparks your attention and it gets you excited about something new, as well as it strengthens your gut health.

Speaker 1: 8:59

So one of the secrets I found that works for me this year is that I have tried to cut them up and have them ready, both fruit and vegetables. I have these trays that sort the fruits and vegetables and when the groceries you know, when I bring the groceries in I immediately, you know, cut up cucumbers and cut carrots and cherry tomatoes and just refill those trays. I also have one for fruit, that you know, we put berries in there and cut up pears and oranges and apples, and you know, again, variety, we try some pineapple, we might try some. Maybe we'll put some figs and plums and peaches in there once we get those going well, so just having them prepared, that really helps me feel tempted to eat them more.

Speaker 1: 9:43

And as I'm aging or I'm not really aging maybe, but as I've gotten wiser in years I am trying to also focus on protein, because having the right ratio of plants to protein is the great key to a healthy lifestyle. And so that means, you know, focusing on some meat and dairy type things. But there are some plants that have protein in them. So, like hummus, you could eat a lot of hummus that's derived from a plant. So you're getting some more protein and a plant there Avocado has protein, so you can vary your diet that way by choosing a source of protein that is also a plant and that will count towards your 30 per day. So hopefully that gave you a lot of different options of ways to enjoy plants. Hopefully that gave you a lot of different options of ways to enjoy plants.

Speaker 1: 10:36

So for our closing today, I'm going to read an excerpt from the book called the Little Frog's Guide to Self-Care, and it goes like this as we grow up and our understanding of the world starts to form.

Speaker 1: 11:02

As we grow up and our understanding of the world starts to form, it's easy to stop wondering why some leaves are green and others are purple or red. Are snails born with shells? Why do some flowers bloom at night? Of course, with the internet we can find answers to all of these questions within seconds, but letting yourself think about it first can help you stay curious, and it might even spark a genuine interest in something you've never really thought about before. May it be so. So thanks so much for joining us today as we talked about all of the different things that I have growing, all of my excitement and joy for plants and blooms, and how to eat more plants and protein. Hopefully you felt inspired by that, and even if you just grow a little succulent on your desk, you find the joy of having something grow, and we'll be back next week to talk about some more things that will bring light into your life, and hope you'll join us then too. And until next time, peace, thank you.