Issue Date: April 4, 2004

Home: Comfortable family gathering spaces

Garden: Safe yards for kids and pets
Power of plants

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The life-changing power of plants

Meet four people who found a new sense of creativity after unearthing their inner gardener.
By Fran Sorin

Over the course of my career, garden design clients, students in my workshops and callers to my weekly radio show have recounted to me not only how gardening has enriched their lives but also how it gives them access to a piece of themselves that had been buried deep inside. Through them I've realized how gardening can indeed help one gain a sense of curiosity and freedom, and facilitate a more creative life. Here are three cases in which lives were transformed:

Case One: A couple's bond grows stronger
Susan Deutsch and Jim Hamilton are the parents of two young boys. Susan is a choreographer and dance movement therapist; Jim is a musician who owns a recording studio. They live in an old Victorian duplex in Germantown, a neighborhood of Philadelphia known for its rich, diverse history. When they called me about redesigning their back yard -- a small, rectangular lot with no privacy -- I suggested that instead of enclosing it they leave a portion of the yard visible, to inspire others in the community.

Once we unloaded the bulldozer and started moving dirt around, neighbors began stopping by the fence, mesmerized. We remade an undistinguished area into a play space for the boys as well as a refuge and entertaining space for Jim and Susan. Within a few days, with all of us doing the planting, the garden was complete.

By the time I returned to their home for a barbecue (with a live band), I was amazed by how much the trees had grown and how this disheveled urban lot had become a semi-private oasis. But my big payoff came when Susan told me that making this garden had helped her relationship with her husband. It was the first time in years they had worked together on a project in which they were both invested. She used words like "in unison" and "togetherness" to describe what planning and planting a garden had done for them as a couple.

Within the next year, they worked together on renovations inside their home and collaborated professionally for the first time: She choreographed a piece, and he wrote the music for it.

Case Two: A fallen tree helps a business flower
After lightning struck her huge beech tree, Helaine Rosenfeld called me to discuss her options. When I walked through her undulating property, with a formal garden, I saw that the innate curve of the land was yearning for a wild, natural garden. I suggested she take advantage of the space left by the tree's demise to plant an informal perennial border with a winding path down the center. That was more than four years ago, and today I often find Helaine on all fours, pulling weeds and suggesting which colors will go well together -- something she wouldn't have done when I first started working with her.

A few years ago, Helaine told me she and some friends had started the Well Healed Collection, designer-styled accessories for people with disabilities, including wheelchair bags, totes and slings. The collection is infused with floral motifs; I couldn't resist asking Helaine, who is a psychotherapist by day, where the inspiration for the designs had come from. With a little laugh, she explained that the idea had sprung from being in her garden early in the morning or late in the day. And she added, "Whoever thought a garden right outside my window would be my entree into the business world?"

Case Three: A kitchen garden lets ambition bloom
Bridgit Dengel, a writer, producer and actor, rushed me into her Brooklyn kitchen one day to show me her dying hydrangea. She was upset and mumbled something about how everything she touched ended up dying. With a few simple measures (cutting the dead flowers, removing moss covering the soil and watering thoroughly), I assured Bridgit she just needed to calm down and tend to the plant.

Next time we spoke, she reported that not only was the hydrangea living, but leaves were emerging from its stems. From then on, whenever we visited, I would give Bridgit a plant cutting. Then she'd tell me how well her plants were doing and how they brought her beauty and happiness.

Last year Bridgit told me she was going back to school to get a master's degree in social work. Stunned, I asked what had made her decide on a midlife career change. "This may sound silly," she told me, "but each morning when I walk into the kitchen and see all of these flourishing plants, it gives me a sense of the possibilities one has in a lifetime. I started with a half-dead plant; now I have an entire garden growing on my kitchen sink. If I can start from nothing and make a garden grow, I certainly can go back to school." Bridgit is now in her second semester at Columbia University's School of Social Work. To this day, she keeps me updated on the progress of her kitchen garden.

Fran Sorin recounts more transformative stories in her new book, Digging Deep: Unearthing Your Creative Roots Through Gardening (Warner Books, $22.95). Her revamped Web site is at fransorin.com.