How to rewild your creative practice

Touch enough grass and you’ll realize how much grows when you’re less in control

Illustration by Joslyn Reid

As a writer, editor, and artist, I’ve always used digital tools to create for the digital realm—professional things like emails, strategy docs, and blog posts, but also fun things like zines, websites, and a DIY artist residency program. Since my teenage years, the computer has been my favorite tool for both working and art-making, but sometimes, after shutting my laptop at the end of the day, I’d feel a bit empty. I craved something more tactile and immersive, something less digital. Something real.

To seek a less online life, I eventually left NYC for the woods of Upstate New York. Eight years ago, as a newly remote worker, I was finally able to touch grass any time I wanted. And I did: In between Zoom meetings, I’d head outside to walk around and get to know the plants in my yard. Pretty quickly, I realized that the more time I spent immersed in nature, the better I felt—and the more I wanted to go beyond merely walking in the grass. I wanted to work with it, and with all the flowers, trees, and bugs I was befriending. This was how I fell into gardening.

As I taught myself how to grow things, I got hooked on gardening as an embodied creative practice. It was an entirely new feeling to plant something and then watch it sprout roots, stems, and buds, to be able to visit the garden every day and, in real time, see my efforts grow, bloom, and harbor entire little ecosystems.

As I’ve rewilded my yard over the past years, incidentally, I’ve rewilded my creative practice in the process. I still spend a ton of time working on the computer, but grounding myself in the dirt most days has fundamentally changed my approach to working and creating. (And it rewired me into a happier, healthier person.)

For anyone else feeling burned out by digital life, I’d like to share six wise tips my garden has bestowed. Touch grass, get your hands dirty, and watch more bugs—maybe even grow yourself a garden—and you’ll see exactly what I mean.

Six tips for creating, from the garden

1. Become enmeshed in your creative ecosystem

Learning to garden started with learning what, and who, already called my landscape home. The more I’ve catered my garden to suit the native species of my region, the better success I’ve had—because I’ve stopped placing myself at the center of what I make. By considering the animals, insects, and even the weather as my collaborators, I’ve come to embrace my yard as a wildly creative and community-driven ecosystem that I’m working with, rather than against. Collaboration consistently wins over competition, and knowing your real, live creative community is essential for abundant flourishing.

2. Start where you are, and use what you’ve got

It’s easy to avoid starting a project because you think you lack the knowledge, resources, or time to pull it off. But when you feel magnetically pulled towards a new creative idea, gardening has taught me to go for it, even (and maybe especially) if you’re not sure how it will work out. For example, I didn’t start with a green thumb, and I still don’t have a greenhouse, but I’ve found a scrappy way to grow tons of plants from seeds using shelves and grow lights in my living room. There’s always a way to get started on something, and you will learn as you go, so use whatever resources you can dredge up, start tinkering, and trust the process. More often than not, the rest will follow.

3. Kill things early, and often

When I started my first baby plants from seeds, I quickly learned the importance of “pinching” and “dead-heading.” These are tried-and-true methods in which you snip off a young plant’s head or spent blooms to encourage bushier long-term growth. Each time I pinch or dead-head a plant, it feels a bit violent, or like I’m setting the plant back—but it works and reminds me how important it is to edit ruthlessly, and even kill, ideas. We gardeners can’t be too precious. Like creators, we need to keep things growing by cutting whatever bits aren’t thriving. By coddling an idea, you’ll often overwork or overthink it. Instead, practice tough love and prune projects to channel their energy towards focused resilience.

4. Sow lots of seeds, as you never know what will grow

The adage is true: The more you sow, the more you reap. I hosted a seed swap this spring, and at the end of the event, I had a ton of leftovers of all kinds. With the extra abundance, I freely sowed a multiplicity of plants all around my yard—a technique some call “chaos gardening”—and was surprised to see what thrived. Gourds of all shapes and sizes have come climbing up my garden fence, and a kaleidoscopic array of native wildflowers has taken over a neglected corner of my yard. Of course, much of what I planted never sprouted at all, but by over-seeding, I was able to see what naturally wanted to grow. This approach—of seeding lots of possibilities and then following whichever catches momentum—has helped me cultivate a more abundant garden and creative life than I ever thought possible.

5. Appreciate that progress can be slow and non-linear

Over time, I’ve finally realized that nearly everything takes longer than I think it will. While I appreciate a good deadline and love to ride a burst of fast-paced creative momentum, I’ve also come to appreciate the importance of letting a project unfold slowly over time. Just like you can’t rush a plant as it’s establishing its roots, you can’t force an idea to flourish—you can only tend to it and hope for the best. Similarly, it’s essential to work with the seasons. There will always be fallow periods when a project goes dormant and might seem dead. But everything can be composted, and spring always comes, so inevitably, a new cycle of creative momentum will come your way before you know it.

6. When your harvest comes in, enjoy it

While it’s hard for me to walk through my garden without seeing a flaw or a task that needs doing, I try to bask in its majesty every so often. I also make sure to cut flowers to enjoy indoors, cook fresh meals from the vegetables I grow, and share my abundance with friends and family. Establishing my garden has been a ton of (mostly fun) work. When I intentionally pause to take it all in, I feel proud of what I’ve accomplished—especially since I can see all its verdant splendor in such a physical, embodied way. So, when you complete a project or hit a milestone, take the time to appreciate it and celebrate it. You made something awesome, and now it’s a part of the wider world—whether digital or physical.