One of the best jobs that has emerged in recent years is coaching, which was already a booming business before the economic downturn. Recently, the recession has been propelling the market towards personal and professional coaching, but the most recent great idea to achieve this type of paid mentoring is coaching. Because meaning originates within ourselves, not from the outside world, the ability to build a meaningful life depends on our ability and willingness to take positive actions to incorporate into our lives those aspects of life that we value personally, including gardening.
By connecting the transformative power of gardening with the choices gardeners make, a gardener-focused coach can help them create personal spaces that are not only beautiful and healthy, but also provide a world sanctuary that speaks to their souls.
Creating our own meaning encompasses the thought, energy, emotion, time, money and commitment that we are willing to spend in the service of making our own dreams come true. In the gardening context, this means tuning in to why we believe our vision of gardening is important and claiming that it is reason enough to garden in our own way.
For example, a planter was not credited for the multitude of gardening decisions she had made over the course of 30 years. After a tour of the garden and a discussion with a gardener coach, his vision of his garden and his place within it had completely changed, in half an hour. Within three months, her ability to meet her own priorities skyrocketed.
Likewise, a person who cares deeply about the impact of chemicals on groundwater will not feel comfortable if they have a lawn service to spray pesticides on a regular schedule, if at all. A vegan who is growing her own vegetables will want to know the exact source and composition of any compost she uses.
Gardener training is different from garden training
The yard coaches caused quite a stir when they entered the scene about five years ago. They have been covered by The New York Times and other national newspapers and radio and television networks. garden howto’s training focuses on horticultural knowledge and mechanical skills of growing plants.
Gardener training focuses on the personal growth of gardeners to help them reach a mental space that allows them to develop an intimate and holistic relationship with their land. Through a series of personalized tasks and exercises, gardeners can learn to rediscover and focus on the things that really matter to them in their gardens, restore the meaning of their gardening efforts, and revitalize a precious hobby.
Garden coaching is by its local nature, so the coach can physically go to the garden. But a gardener coach can work with anyone, anywhere in the world. All customers need is a mode of communication and some photos of their garden. Computers and digital cameras make it all very easy.
Medical professionals and landscapers have been dancing around the bond between plants and people for decades. Research shows that having hospital rooms that overlook a garden speeds patient recovery, so hospitals build them that way because it works. But such patients are passive bystanders; Non-participants. Instead, hospitals must open an avenue through which patients, staff, and visitors can interact with the garden in terms that are meaningful to them. This is somewhat different from horticultural therapy programs in which gardening is used as a means of achieving specific physical or mental therapy goals.
Similarly, landscape designers understand that some people experience a spiritual urge in gardens that are intended to evoke a certain state of mind. Gardeners will react to the design of their own distinctive shapes. But not all gardeners will have a similar reaction to a specific design, because “spiritual” means different things to different people.