What Gardening and Art taught me
- beezytiger
- May 9
- 8 min read
Updated: May 10
For a long time, I kept gardening and art in completely separate categories in my head and my day to day. Gardening felt practical. You grow food, keep plants alive, maybe make a space look beautiful along the way. Art felt more personal and inward, less “useful” to others maybe. So for years, I never really thought of them as connected or intersecting.
But the longer I spent doing both, the more I became convinced that gardening and art are actually incredibly similar practices, especially philosophically. Both have taught me how to observe more carefully, let go of (a little) control, embrace imperfection, and find joy in the process instead of obsessing over the outcome.
Slow Down and Observe
I think observation is at the center of both gardening and art practices. In fact, it is required for us to look, observe, and reflect before we take action.
When drawing or painting, we first take stock of what we see (or reflect on our thoughts), then start putting it on paper. We suddenly start noticing things most people overlook: how shadows are never really gray, how colors change depending on the light, how no two leaves are shaped exactly alike. I used to struggle with that, but after I started watercolor, I began to look at the world around me very differently: colors become more distinct, and I notice shapes, edges, and small shifts in light that I would have previously overlooked.
Gardening trains the exact same muscle. Especially in permaculture, we are encouraged to take it slow and really observe and reflect before planning what to grow and start planting. Whether it is how the wind blows, the type of soil and how well it holds water, insect or animal activities, how and when the sun shines on certain spots in the garden, subtle color changes in plants through the season, or simply the way one plant stretches toward the sun while another prefers shade.
That kind of observation changes the way I move through the world. I have learned to be slower, more curious, and more thoughtful. I start paying attention instead of rushing through things. Through practicing art, I often find myself thinking about things that feel deeply relevant to gardening, and when I am gardening, I find myself reflecting on things that belong to art. The two practices keep feeding into each other in ways I didn’t expect.
Practice Makes… Something
We grow up hearing “practice makes perfect,” but I don’t think perfection is really the point.
In gardening and art alike, practice simply increases the chances that something interesting, meaningful, or beautiful might happen. We can prepare healthy soil, water consistently, companion planting carefully, and still end up with strange-shaped carrots or tomatoes with cracks in them. We can spend hours sketching or painting and still make something awkward to our eyes.
That’s normal, and I think there is actually power in that imperfection.
Perfectly controlled or manicured gardens can feel oddly lifeless to me. But when plants spill into pathways a little, when flowers self-seed unexpectedly, when shapes and textures overlap naturally, it feels alive — the same reason polyculture gardens feel more vibrant than monocultures. Heirloom tomatoes are a good example of this too. They often grow into strange shapes, with folds, bumps, and uneven coloring, yet they are usually some of the most flavorful tomatoes you can eat.
Similarly, one of the reasons I love watercolor is that it is soft, unpredictable, and can produce lots of unexpected outcomes. We even have a name for it: happy accidents. A brushstroke lands differently than intended and somehow improves the whole painting. A bloom in watercolor can suddenly become a cloud, texture, or movement in the piece. What makes a composition interesting is often contrast, tension, variation, imbalance, and surprise. Through that, I learn to embrace serendipity.
Letting Go of Control
Over time, both practices taught me something important: we cannot control everything, and maybe we are not supposed to.
We can’t bully a seed into germinating faster (although every spring, I still check every other hour if the newly sown seeds have germinated 😅). We can’t force creativity to appear on command. This might be the biggest similarity between gardening and art. Both require effort, but neither responds well to force.
We can create conditions (by using indoor grow lamps). We can prepare (by laying out fresh compost for sowing). We can practice (by sketching every day). But after that, we also need to trust and leave the rest to the system/nature, and leave room for surprises. After all, we can’t control if a storm hits or not, or if our painting gets selected for an exhibition.
I used to think skill meant controlling outcomes perfectly. Now I think skill is also about responding well when things don’t go according to plan, and working with what happens instead of fighting it constantly. This becomes especially true in permaculture gardening: instead of reacting to aphids eating one of our vegetables, we wait and see what happens. Usually, slowly, the ladybugs will come and take care of the problem for you.
The important part is showing up repeatedly, taking risks, and continuing anyway after failing. Trust that if you keep painting the same subject, it will get to a point where you look at it and say, “Ah, that’s a beautiful painting.” Trying and failing is still infinitely better than not trying at all. Trying gives us possibility; not trying guarantees nothing.
I think people often assume artists are naturally talented, or gardeners are born with “green thumbs.” But most of us just spend enough time paying attention and practicing. Personally, I simply love both enough to spend a lot of time learning about them and doing them.
Honest Work Gives Something Back
Another thing I love about both gardening and art is how honest they are. We put in the time and work, and eventually we will get something back — whether it is exactly what we expected or not. You cannot fake practice.
If we spend time drawing regularly, our hands become steadier. Our eyes improve. We begin understanding shape, light, and composition more intuitively. If we spend time gardening, we slowly understand timing, soil, seasons, ecosystems, and patterns in nature.
The progress may be slow, but it’s real. And even when the outcome itself isn’t amazing, the process still gives something back: maybe joy, maybe confidence, maybe patience, maybe mindfulness, maybe relaxation, maybe just a really nice afternoon.
Enjoy the Intangible Fruit
When people think about gardening, they usually focus on the harvest: vegetables, herbs, flowers. When people think about art, they focus on the finished piece.
But I feel that some of the most meaningful and enjoyable parts of both are intangible or not obvious.
Seeing insects, birds, frogs, and bees visiting my garden gives me joy that I never imagined. I love knowing that I helped provide shelter and food for them, while some of them quietly help me too through pollination or pest control.
The same goes for art. Painting and drawing help pull me out of my head and calm my anxiety (especially during air travels). There is something deeply relaxing about mixing colors, watching watercolor move across paper, or slowly building layers in a sketch.
Not everything valuable has to be a tangible product or achievement. I simply savour the process of seeding, planting, drawing, and painting. Yes, maybe AI will take over certain jobs or opportunities one day. But as long as I keep practicing and using my hands to create, nothing can really take away from me the joy and internal rewards of making art and growing plants.
There Is No One Correct Way
People often ask about the “right” way to garden. I also remember asking early on what the “right” way was to start a watercolor painting: do I wet the entire paper first and use wet-on-wet technique, or should it be wet-on-dry?
And yes, there are principles that help, and understanding them is important. Healthy soil matters. Light matters. Compost matters. Learning about color theory and how the medium works helps. But after studying the basics, so much becomes personal. It goes right back to observation and reflection: what feels right to us, what fits our style, what works for the environment around us, what is kind to other living beings, what technique suits the subject I am painting, and what medium we enjoy using more at the moment. Some painters work realistically. Others paint abstractly. Some gardeners prefer structured rows. Others want things wild and overflowing.
No single approach is inherently more correct or the absolutely best.
I actually think learning the “rules” is useful mostly because it gives you the freedom to bend them later. Except one rule in gardening that I stand firmly by: always grow organically - for ourselves, but also for the other beings sharing the space with us.
Overall, less judgment improves both practices tremendously. Not every painting needs to be profound. Not every tomato needs to be symmetrical. Not every creative process needs to produce something impressive to have value. Sometimes the outcome is simply the outcome. I am still working on this one myself. Instead of saying, “my painting is bad,” I try to say, “I like this part, but I don’t like this other part because of X, and next time I’ll try doing it differently.”
You can always repaint something later. Replant and resow something later. Try again next season, as long as you come back to it and don’t give up.
Giving Yourself Grace
In general, I think both gardening and art ultimately taught me to be more patient with myself.
We will make paintings we don’t consider beautiful.We will accidentally kill plants.We will have seasons where nothing seems to work.
And despite what social media likes to show us, most people become “experts” at these things through years of mistakes, experimentation, observation, and persistence. Not magic. Not talent alone. Just curiosity mixed with practice.
Maybe that’s why gardening and art feel so connected to me now. Both are practices of attention and being present. Both ask us to collaborate with uncertainty. Both remind us that imperfection is usually where the interesting stuff begins.
And perhaps that’s enough.
Why I Started Beezy Tiger
I think all of the aforementioned is why it felt so natural to eventually combine gardening and art through my small business, Beezy Tiger. What started as two separate interests slowly became two practices that shape the way I observe, create, slow down, and connect with the world and people around me. They also keep informing each other in small but meaningful ways: what I learn through art often shows up in how I see the garden, and what I notice in the garden often finds its way back into my art practice.
Through Beezy Tiger, I currently offer gardening workshops and consultations, and soon I will also begin offering larger watercolor workshops as well. I also love creating combination workshops where gardening and art naturally meet. For example, I hosted a private workshop where participants learned about edible flowers, then painted one of them in watercolor; another where they learned about beneficial insects and sketched them afterward. To me, it feels like a very natural way to deepen observation and connection with the things we are learning about.
None of these workshops are really about perfection or creating something “impressive.” They are more about observation, curiosity, experimentation, getting our hands dirty, and learning to enjoy the process a little more gently.
A big reason I started Beezy Tiger is simply because I want to share the joy of both practices with other people. Gardening and art have brought so much mindfulness, creativity, patience, and unexpected contentment into my life, and I would love to create spaces where others can experience that too.
So whether you want to learn how to grow food, spend time painting with watercolors, or simply reconnect with your creativity and curiosity, you are always welcome to join me.
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