I grew up climbing skyscrapers in China. The dirt I knew wasn’t the kind you could plant in; it floated along the asphalt, stirred by a street-sweeper’s broom, settling in the crevices of benches and bushes. My mother forbade us from touching the bushes because they left our hands so dusty we’d stain our clothes. We lived halfway up a high-rise apartment building, our world made of concrete and air. I spent my childhood scaling boulders and wedging my tennis shoes into the crooks of trees. The world, to me, was tall. I didn’t think much about the ground.
When we moved to America, I was sixteen, and the concept of a grassy yard was strange. The soles of my feet were unaccustomed to earth. Though the tops of my feet bore the dust of city streets, the bottoms were white and soft, untested by grass or soil. Running barefoot through a field was as foreign to me as the language that filled the air around me.
It was books, not experience, that made me love the ground. Strangely enough, my love for reading pulled me indoors even as it planted the seeds of longing for something rooted, something real. Andrew Peterson’s account of building an English garden in The God of the Garden captivated me, as did the gardens I encountered in fiction—the stump where Adam cried in East of Eden, the pastoral beauty of The Little White Horse. These books made the world beneath my feet feel like something worth knowing.
A love of reading, I believe, is not so different from a love of gardening. Both require patience. Both demand presence. A book is a thing to be held, examined, and considered, much like a plant. I run my fingers over the pages of a well-bound novel the same way I graze the leaves of my little kalanchoe, testing its health with the touch of a fingertip. There is a luxury in curling up with a book, in letting the sunlight inch across the carpet as you turn its pages. Half the pleasure of reading is in the space it creates—the moment of stillness before, the lingering thoughts after. To read is to forget yourself entirely, only to return and find that you have changed. You leave the chair carrying something invisible but weighty, like the scent of ink and paper clinging to your skin.
I imagine gardening offers the same kind of transformation. Though I do not yet have a garden, I think of the quiet commitment it demands. I imagine kneeling in the dirt, pressing a seed into the earth, and feeling the same satisfaction I do when opening a new book. I picture my hands stained with soil instead of ink, my fingernails packed with dirt instead of words. I imagine watching seedlings push through the earth with the same quiet anticipation as watching a story unfold, waiting for its climax. And at the end of it all, I imagine stepping back, wiping the sweat from my brow, and knowing I have changed—not just the soil, but myself.
I read Candide in high school, and while I disagreed with much of Voltaire’s cynicism, I have never forgotten its final line: “Let us tend our garden.” After everything—after loss, after disillusionment, after realizing that the world is not as he expected—Candide chooses to cultivate something real, something small and tangible. Unlike Candide, I am not disillusioned with the world; I find it astonishingly good. But I know how easy it is to forget that goodness in the rush of ambition and movement. I do not want to live only in ascent, always climbing, always reaching. I want to root myself. I want to remember that I am made of dirt, not just air and stone. I want to sit in the golden light of an October afternoon and feel the weight of the world’s beauty settle into my bones. I want to read books. I want to tend a garden. I want to carve out a life with intention, slowly, gently, savoring the time it takes.
That is why I will teach my children to garden. Not just so they can grow things, but so they can know, in the depths of their being, that they are alive—that they are not machines, but souls with roots. And while I have no children yet, I have a little plant I am tending. It is teaching me. I have a bookshelf bowing under the weight of volumes I have gathered. They have taught me well. One day, I will pass these lessons on, both in ink and in earth.
When I’m older, I want to teach my children to garden. This will be more difficult than it sounds because I have never learned to garden myself. I never had enough dirt.
literary author & writing educator
Savannah Morello
Savannah is a children’s book author, writing mentor, and storytelling educator passionate about helping aspiring writers bring their stories to life. With over 35 published books and years of experience in marketing and copywriting, her workshops, coaching, and writing insights equip authors with the tools, confidence, and clarity to craft compelling stories. When she’s not writing, she’s sipping black coffee, studying philosophy, or dreaming up new ways to help others tell their stories boldly.
