Month: January 2025

If you’ve seen TikTokers apply what looks like a deep blue lipstick, it’s probably this lip stain.

“If only I had a greenhouse, a 1/2-acre English cottage, cutting garden and staff to assist with digging holes, my gardening life would be complete.”

This is how I feel every time I finish scrolling through dreamy garden images on Instagram. And it’s not a good feeling. I’ve been able to put “if only” speculation in my rearview now that I’m older. For example, I no longer connect happiness with losing weight the way I did when I was younger. But I can’t help but let that voice creep into my brain when I’m drooling over glorious dahlia beds in an influencer’s garden.

One way I combat Insta-envy is to spend less time in virtual gardens and more time in physical ones. And my favorite place to go for actionable garden inspiration is my local botanical garden. I’m fortunate to live within easy reach of one of Travel Channel’s 20 best botanical gardens in the US, the magnificent 250-acre New York Botanical Garden, but there are thousands of them throughout the United States and even more worldwide. A quick Google search for “botanical gardens near me” will reveal your local gems.

Why a Garden Visit Will Make You Feel Better

It’s well known that the act of gardening is a proven way to improve your physical and mental well-being. Garden visits also offer a range of health benefits, including:

Inspiration

Wandering through different garden spaces triggers creativity. I like to see how different colors, shapes and textures work together. It’s a richer experience to see gardens in person than to look at them in photographs.

Exercise

Botanical gardens have well-maintained trails so they are wonderful places to get in an outdoor walk. A stroll in fresh air with sunshine on your face is an immediate mood booster.

Social Engagement

A visit to a botanical garden is a nice way to engage with pleasant people who share a common interest. This is a terrific way to combat feelings of loneliness and isolation.

Continuing Ed

Botanical gardens offer multi-session courses and workshops to help you learn more about the wonderful world of plants. Learning new things helps to keep you mentally sharp.

De-Stress

Gardens are a serene oasis. The NYBG is minutes from the heart of Manhattan but feels a world away. I turn off my phone and tune into the sound of wind rustling through tree leaves, birdsong and playful laughter coming from the children’s garden.

Advice for Visiting Your Local Botanical Garden

If you’re visiting your botanical garden for the first time, these tips can help you have a rewarding experience, so you’ll be excited to return.

Choose the Right Day/Time

Weekends can be crowded so a mid-week visit is preferable. During the warm summer months, you’ll want to visit in the morning when it’s cooler.

Make a Plan

Download a garden map and highlight the areas that interest you the most. Visit these first, then, if you still have the energy, head off to explore other exhibits.

Prep for a Hike

Most of your day will be spent outdoors so take the precautions you would if you were heading out for a walk in the woods. Bring water, wear sunscreen and pack a snack to stave off hunger pangs.

Check the Garden Calendar

Daily events, including guided tours, are featured on garden calendars. Some of these may require advance reservations and additional fees.

Bring a Fully Charged Phone or Camera

You’ll take mental pictures as you wander the garden, but, let’s face it, our memories aren’t what they used to be. Photos are a wonderful way to capture inspiration you can refer back to when you’re home.

Go to the Gift Shop

Garden gift shops are packed with delightful treasures. I’ve purchased live plants, unique seeds, gorgeous coffee table books and floral home fragrances. Some I’ve gifted; others I’ve kept as treats for myself.

Take a Break

Don’t hesitate to sit and rest when you need to. Find a bench, ride the tram if one’s available or find a snack shop and take a tea or coffee break.

I had such a lovely time after my first visit to NYBG, I purchased a membership as an incentive to visit often. My membership comes with many perks including free entry, reduced parking fees and discounts on gift shop and restaurant purchases. If your local garden offers a membership, it’s worth researching.

When you return home from your garden visit, set aside time to review your photographs. I always forget to capture the plant identification tags in my pictures because I’m concentrating on the pretty flowers and colors. If you’re like me, there are several plant identification apps to help you put names to blooms as you plan your next gardening project.

Read Thinking About Starting a Garden? Learn from My Mistakes and Successes!

Let’s Have a Conversation:

What is your favorite flower to grow? Do you have physical challenges that make gardening difficult for you? Do you consider yourself a rookie, intermediate or advanced gardener?

It’s the sweater the internet can’t stop talking about.

Don’t worry, no actual donuts are involved.

It’s the new year, time to start fresh, making resolutions for changes that contribute to our well-being. One way to do it is to make peace with our possessions and remove the unwanted clutter from our lives. In addition, as we get older, we often need to downsize.

When my 93-year-old father died in January 2020, my sisters and I dismantled our parents’ home where they had lived for half a century. That year, I resolved to make things easier for my children. Soon, I realized that decluttering my life was more than a one-shot process. It was a lifestyle, and it was empowering, even liberating.

Where to Start?

The good news is that there are great resources to help you. The most well-known is Marie Kondo, the Japanese organizing consultant, who said, “The question of what you want to own is actually the question of how you want to live your life,” offering six commitments:

• Commit yourself to tidying up. Starting with a commitment will help you eliminate the feeling of overwhelm.
• Imagine your ideal lifestyle: Consider the life you want to lead and make your home a space that reflects how you want to live.
• Finish discarding first: Removing unnecessary items will help you organize the things you want to keep.
• Tidy by category, not location: Instead of going from room to room, focus on specific categories like clothing, books, papers, and sentimental items.
• Ask yourself if it sparks joy: Take each item and only keep it if the answer is yes.

Margareta Magnusson, author of The Swedish Art of Ageing Well and Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, says that once you have “unburdened by baggage (emotional and actual),” you can dedicate your life to valuing each day, the challenging moments, and the many joyful times. She describes removing or redistributing items as uplifting rather than overwhelming, writing about death and dying in hopeful and sometimes funny ways.

Another resource is Rachel Kodanaz’sFinding Peace, One Piece at a Time. Kodanaz describes the spiritual aspects of honoring beautiful memories and the power of special possessions in ways to keep our loved ones with us while not accumulating too much.

Making These Ideas Work for Me

I purposely listed resources at the beginning of this blog because we each need to find our unique approach and don’t need to follow the suggestions to the letter. I hope my personal examples can help you feel more connected to the process of downsizing and decluttering.

Keeping Accumulation Down

When we moved into our small home with three children 35 years ago, I was forced not to accumulate too much. We converted the garage into my office, so there was limited storage space. As our kids moved out, we asked them to take their “stuff” with them. Yet, it is incredible how things continually pile up.

While regularly donating clothing, books, and dishes, I accumulated old receipts, voided contracts, and useless financial documents. Recently, I filled eight garbage bags with documents that were too sensitive for home recycling bins! I was careful not to dump the deed to my home or pink slip for a current vehicle. Watching each bag go through the shredder at a local facility left me feeling lighter!

Books, Books, and More Books

Following Kondo’s suggestion to keep items that give joy, I had to face my love of books. Over the years, mountains of books piled up on top of packed bookshelves. So, I organized my books by category. In the living room, I kept unique books and family photo albums. In my office, I kept professional books used for writing and another bookshelf with family history and journals.

On a smaller shelf, my little collection of children’s books had been saved for my grandchildren. Reading them to my grandchild is special. The rest I regularly donate. Even those in less-than-perfect shape that I place in the little free book boxes around my neighborhood. When the time comes (hopefully not too soon), I plan to find places to donate my professional books and any family history materials my children may choose not to keep.

What to Do About Inherited Items

As you might imagine, dismantling my parents’ home during the pandemic was emotional, with so many things that bring back memories. I decided not to keep anything that would clutter my home. My father, a Jewish cantor, had a huge collection of Jewish books and an archive of music, including reel-to-reel tapes of his voice.

Finding places for them was not easy during the pandemic. Many places turned me down, but I persisted. The University of California’s Jewish Studies department accepted 17 books, and a bookseller took the rest. I was very excited to donate seven boxes of tapes to the Jewish Music Association, which had an archive of cantors of the 20th century. It was harder to figure out what to do with the art.

During the 1920s, my grandfather collected art from budding German artists who became famous. He managed to get the art out of Germany before the Nazis forced him to flee. After these works of art traveled across oceans of time and history, how could I think about letting go of any of them? But we had to.

My sisters and I kept a few and donated the others. It was painful but healing as I turned the experience into an adventure. I researched the artists and created a database with links to their stories. I even befriended the daughter of one artist.

What About You?

How have you sorted through all your possessions and kept the ones with meaning for you? Do you have any tips? We can learn from each other!