How Gardening Healed My Health & How it Can Heal Yours Too

🏎️ For the cliff notes version:

• The soil of Daffodilly Farms was generated from my broken soul. Plant by plant, with hands in the soil, gardening helped me learn how to heal and grow healthy (mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically).

• And, in this regeneration of my heart, seeds were waiting for the right germination conditions to grow into what Daffodilly Farms is today: a therapeutic space for the community. 

• I noticed how so many people (myself included) walk around stressed out 24/7, then you add the chronic stresses on top of it… and it’s ALL suffocating. 

• I was desperate for self-care and healing. So, I enrolled in a cut flower course to grow flowers as a business and returned to school. I had limited time, budget, and energy (oh, and NO green thumb) as a single mom, so I figured I might as well combine purpose for a paycheck while learning about healing in the garden.

• These choices led to the opening up of a therapeutic horticulture practice helping people de-stress with gardening from difficulties this world so eagerly gives us.

• The Daffodilly Farms blooms are our services and products we can harvest and give to you. They look like in-person therapeutic horticulture sessions and digital stress management tools. 

• Below, I share how and why our digital tool “Serenity over Stress Subscription” came into existence.

The beginning – Seed Germination:

The germination process for this subscription seed started because of an unearthing within my own life. 

In 2019, I kicked my ex-husband’s heroin addiction out of my house. 

I was drowning in depression from a broken heart and failed marriage. 

I wore an “everything’s okay mask” to take care of my one and half-year-old daughter solo all while barely keeping my home responsibilities and full-time small business alive.

It was in this year my life had become unmanageable due to chronic stresses and my distress.  

I needed help ASAP.

I was desperate for anything and God showed up. He led me down a path of learning how to grow cut flowers. 

At the time, I  had zero gardening skills, lots of debt, no time or energy… BUT I desperately needed self-care and on the self-care checklist 📝 (my therapist prescribed) was item #4: Sunlight & nature.

So, I checked it off ✅ and implemented flower gardening as a self-care tool.

I took the mustard seed God placed in my hands and sowed it with faith.

This path gave me peace, a purpose, and a positive perspective. 🙌

The middle – Flowers growing:

Every day, I went out to the garden with the weight of the world and God exchanged the heaviness with a horticulture treasure that taught me serenity over stress.

With hands in the soil and eyes fixed on the beauty of flowers, I learned about:

• who I was

• how to take care of myself

Every nugget I discovered, I wanted to shout it 🎤 to the world but didn’t know how at the time. 

So, I documented it by taking photos and making notes about the connection between plant health, human health, and spiritual health… details upon details about how and why we are so connected.

My gardening notes and photos kept tucked away in my phone and hidden in my pocket for four years…

UNTIL…

The Climax – Flowers Blooming:

…I became bedridden with a neurological disorder in 2023. 

I was ripped away (physically) from being in the garden and I needed to readjust quickly or my self-care would wither away. 

THIS was when I  realized HOW important it was to make access to nature for self-care super accessible for people.

If someone can’t physically be in the garden to use stress-management tools, then how can they still experience the stress relief and self-care relationship nature has to offer?

❓This question was answered after I underwent cranial and spinal decompression surgery and was recovering in a hospital bed. 

I could barely walk and needed to heal my neck and shoulder muscles and retrain them in how to work together again. I needed serenity over stress ASAP.

I remember praying to God “how, how, how am I going to heal from this?”

Then, my phone lit up.📲 I slid open the lock screen and touched my photos app.

I scrolled through FOUR years’ worth of flower photos and notes filled with people-plant health connections that I experienced while gardening.

This easy, passive gardening activity illuminated an idea to play nature music playlists during the night so I could keep my nervous system calm.

ALL the night shift nurses, looking after me, had VIP access to a forest party in the wee hours of the night. 😂

With this healing, people-plant, digital tool in my pocket, my mental and emotional health slowly regenerated. I discovered how I could use a people-plant tool to access serenity over stress without even gardening. 

THIS is where and when the “serenity over stress” subscription bloomed. 

I want to serve you therapeutic horticulture digitally so if life holds you back from physically gardening then you can still access the powerful wellness relationship plants have to offer us.

The End – Flower Harvesting

We aren’t responsible for what knocks us down BUT we are responsible for getting back up and regenerating our mind, soul, spirit, and body. 

I  was able to rise with a people-plant connection at my fingertips despite:

• the lack of energy I had
• the lack of time my recovery schedule demanded
• the lack of physical access to outdoor gardening

Every week, I will help you find your inner peace, purpose, and a positive perspective so you can keep growing and going.

This is what you can expect  in the subscription:

• 🌸 👩‍🏫 1 bite-size, people-plant lesson full of easy-to-understand info on how people and plants are made for each other. Expect Lots of WOW’s & AH-AH’
• 🌿🪛 1 people-plant activity for self-care in under 5 mins. Activate 4 wellness domains in 1 activity! Yes, quality, efficient self-care is possible
• 🌻 ✏️ 1 Journal prompt for self-reflection
• 📸 EXCLUSIVE,beautiful plant photos from the farm – You’ll be the first and only to view them! For subscription eyes only
• 🫶 HANDFUL of fun, unique people-plant wellness facts, news, history, quotes, or phrases!✅ INSTANT ACCESS to all the past newsletters so you won’t miss a charge in your people-plant power-ups
• ⭐️ BONUS: A recap & reminder email with cliff notes, and a cue to activate your people-plant connection (if you haven’t already).

The content is informed by evidence-based research, horticultural therapy practices, & my own experiences.

I have FOUR years’ worth of garden treasures and never-before-seen farm photos in my treasure trove that I can’t wait to share with you.

Make the choice right now to give your time to YOUR wellness or you will end up spending your time on an illness wanting to control you.