Photo by Francesco Gallarotti on Unsplash
An Ontology of Gardening
Process Philosophy & Margaret Roach
An Ontology of Adverbs
Process philosophy offers an ontology of adverbs. In Whitehead’s words: “How an actual entity becomes constitutes what that actual entity is.”
I live in Arkansas, so I will name some of some things that are actual in my own environment in different seasons: my wife planting tomatoes in her backyard, a white oak growing at the edge of our yard, monarch butterflies migrating south, honeybees gathering nectar, earthworms loosening the soil, mitochondria generating energy inside a cell, the Arkansas River winding through towns, a nearby mountain (Mount Nebo) catching morning light, Orion’s Belt rising in the night sky.
I think of how they are—their ways of being in the world or the heavens, their modalities, their manners, so to speak. Whitehead’s point is that their modalities—their “ways”—are what they are. Their whatness, their quiddity to use an old word, is their how-ness, their adverbiality. They are, as it were, living adverbs.
And Whitehead adds: nothing adverbializes by itself. Always the actualities of our world—ourselves included—are becoming themselves (ourselves) in relation to others. We are co-adverbializing. We influence one another, and are indeed parts of one another—holograms, as it were, with the whole contained in each part and each part belonging to the whole. Whitehead's name for this is concrescence. He says that every moment in human life - and every moment in the life of a plant, or an earthworm, or a butterfly, or a star - is a concrescence of the universe: a becoming concrete in the particularities of the world. Gardens are a nexus of living adverbs, and so are those who tend them. We affect one another. We are family.
And this is precisely what Margaret Roach helps us feel. Her way of gardening is not merely a set of techniques—it is a way of being in relationship. I listen to her podcast - A Way to Garden - many mornings as I take a morning walk. Listening to her speak about compost or native plants, about the patience of tending or the curiosity of observing, you can sense a soul becoming herself with a garden. In her stories and practical wisdom, we glimpse the Whiteheadian truth that all becoming is relational, and all adverbs are entwined. We are gardened by our gardens.
Margaret Roach invites us into a way of gardening that is also a way of noticing. She pays attention to the when of things—phenology, the calendar of buds and migrations and slow awakenings. She listens to the cues of weather and soil, the cues of kin with wings or many legs. In all of this, she reveals that a garden is not something we impose upon the land; it is something we enter and, as we notice things, enters us. As Whitehead puts it: "The many become one and are increased by one."
She also reminds us that gardens have histories and futures. They are shaped by past plantings, past storms, past mistakes, and past mercies. Compost piles are repositories of memory—what once was lettuce leaf and oak leaf becomes dark humus and new life. And each seed we sow—milkweed for monarchs, coneflowers for goldfinches, parsley for swallowtails—is a gesture toward futures we hope might arrive. Gardening, then, is always a moral act, thick with responsibility and hope.
Margaret speaks often of “welcoming the wild”—letting gardens be habitats rather than trophies. The untamed is not the enemy but a partner: frogs in the pond, blacksnakes in the shrubs, native grasses dancing with the wind. There is room for imperfection, room for surprise. A gardener can prune, shape, and plant, but she cannot control. Whitehead will say that she cooperates with “the creative advance into novelty.” She is one participant among many.
And gardeners are as various as the gardens they tend—orchard-dwellers, shade gardeners, balcony herb-keepers, tomato enthusiasts, prairie restorers, moss cultivators. Each carries their own soul of gardening: ways of hoping, ways of caring, ways of welcoming the world. Their souls are adverbs, too.
Perhaps this is one more thing Margaret reveals: that gardening is a school for tenderness and an acceptance of change. To garden is to learn how to live gently with the passing of time, to know that things die. Shoots rise and fall. Blooms open and fade. What is new becomes mulch for what is next. As Whitehead puts it: life is a "perpetual perishing" even as it is a creative advance into novelty. The very act of tending what passes away reminds us that change is not necessarily the enemy of beauty—so often part of what makes 'beauty' beautiful is the finitude, the perishing, the impermanence.
An Ontology of Gardening
To speak of a Whiteheadian ontology of gardening is, then, is to recognize this: gardens are places where we can touch the truth that being is becoming. That existence is adverbial. That all creatures—tomatoes and toads, oaks and earthworms—have ways of taking part in the unfolding of the world. A garden reveals that relatedness is not an accident but the essence of life itself. And we, those who tend gardens, are ourselves how we tend the garden.
In this way of seeing, gardeners are philosophers without knowing it. They live the metaphysics. They feel the fluidity. They join the flux. They are tended by the tended.
Margaret Roach uses the word woo-woo to name the spiritual side of gardening. I looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary:
Process philosophy offers an ontology of adverbs. In Whitehead’s words: “How an actual entity becomes constitutes what that actual entity is.”
I live in Arkansas, so I will name some of some things that are actual in my own environment in different seasons: my wife planting tomatoes in her backyard, a white oak growing at the edge of our yard, monarch butterflies migrating south, honeybees gathering nectar, earthworms loosening the soil, mitochondria generating energy inside a cell, the Arkansas River winding through towns, a nearby mountain (Mount Nebo) catching morning light, Orion’s Belt rising in the night sky.
I think of how they are—their ways of being in the world or the heavens, their modalities, their manners, so to speak. Whitehead’s point is that their modalities—their “ways”—are what they are. Their whatness, their quiddity to use an old word, is their how-ness, their adverbiality. They are, as it were, living adverbs.
And Whitehead adds: nothing adverbializes by itself. Always the actualities of our world—ourselves included—are becoming themselves (ourselves) in relation to others. We are co-adverbializing. We influence one another, and are indeed parts of one another—holograms, as it were, with the whole contained in each part and each part belonging to the whole. Whitehead's name for this is concrescence. He says that every moment in human life - and every moment in the life of a plant, or an earthworm, or a butterfly, or a star - is a concrescence of the universe: a becoming concrete in the particularities of the world. Gardens are a nexus of living adverbs, and so are those who tend them. We affect one another. We are family.
And this is precisely what Margaret Roach helps us feel. Her way of gardening is not merely a set of techniques—it is a way of being in relationship. I listen to her podcast - A Way to Garden - many mornings as I take a morning walk. Listening to her speak about compost or native plants, about the patience of tending or the curiosity of observing, you can sense a soul becoming herself with a garden. In her stories and practical wisdom, we glimpse the Whiteheadian truth that all becoming is relational, and all adverbs are entwined. We are gardened by our gardens.
Margaret Roach invites us into a way of gardening that is also a way of noticing. She pays attention to the when of things—phenology, the calendar of buds and migrations and slow awakenings. She listens to the cues of weather and soil, the cues of kin with wings or many legs. In all of this, she reveals that a garden is not something we impose upon the land; it is something we enter and, as we notice things, enters us. As Whitehead puts it: "The many become one and are increased by one."
She also reminds us that gardens have histories and futures. They are shaped by past plantings, past storms, past mistakes, and past mercies. Compost piles are repositories of memory—what once was lettuce leaf and oak leaf becomes dark humus and new life. And each seed we sow—milkweed for monarchs, coneflowers for goldfinches, parsley for swallowtails—is a gesture toward futures we hope might arrive. Gardening, then, is always a moral act, thick with responsibility and hope.
Margaret speaks often of “welcoming the wild”—letting gardens be habitats rather than trophies. The untamed is not the enemy but a partner: frogs in the pond, blacksnakes in the shrubs, native grasses dancing with the wind. There is room for imperfection, room for surprise. A gardener can prune, shape, and plant, but she cannot control. Whitehead will say that she cooperates with “the creative advance into novelty.” She is one participant among many.
And gardeners are as various as the gardens they tend—orchard-dwellers, shade gardeners, balcony herb-keepers, tomato enthusiasts, prairie restorers, moss cultivators. Each carries their own soul of gardening: ways of hoping, ways of caring, ways of welcoming the world. Their souls are adverbs, too.
Perhaps this is one more thing Margaret reveals: that gardening is a school for tenderness and an acceptance of change. To garden is to learn how to live gently with the passing of time, to know that things die. Shoots rise and fall. Blooms open and fade. What is new becomes mulch for what is next. As Whitehead puts it: life is a "perpetual perishing" even as it is a creative advance into novelty. The very act of tending what passes away reminds us that change is not necessarily the enemy of beauty—so often part of what makes 'beauty' beautiful is the finitude, the perishing, the impermanence.
An Ontology of Gardening
To speak of a Whiteheadian ontology of gardening is, then, is to recognize this: gardens are places where we can touch the truth that being is becoming. That existence is adverbial. That all creatures—tomatoes and toads, oaks and earthworms—have ways of taking part in the unfolding of the world. A garden reveals that relatedness is not an accident but the essence of life itself. And we, those who tend gardens, are ourselves how we tend the garden.
In this way of seeing, gardeners are philosophers without knowing it. They live the metaphysics. They feel the fluidity. They join the flux. They are tended by the tended.
Margaret Roach uses the word woo-woo to name the spiritual side of gardening. I looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary:
Designating beliefs or practices conventionally regarded as unscientific, irrational, or outlandish, esp. ones relating to spirituality, mysticism, or alternative therapies.
I realize that the word woo-woo can indeed have negative connotations. But if you watch the videos below, you will quickly realize that, for her, the word woo-woo is tongue in cheek. Woo-woo is just as important as knowing how to garden. And it is an adverb, too: a how to live in relation to the rest of life.
Yes, some prosaically minded 'empiricists' may dismiss some of the ideas above as "unscientific." But those shaped by Whitehead's philosophy do not think that noticing, being sensitive to beauty, accepting loss, and feeling connected to larger wholes are unscientific. Many in the Whiteheadian tradition have exactly these feelings. They (we) call for a deeper empiricism that includes all dimensions of life, including the world's of feeling and relationships with one another and the more than human world. Some of the deeper dimensions include yearnings, inside the heart and soul, for more authentic ways of living in the world. More authentic "subjective aims," to use Whitehead's phrase.
Margaret Roach followed one such aim. It was to leave behind a world of material 'success' and enter into a new way of living, a mode centered in rich bonds with life, not in corporate freneticism. She found some peace there.
- Jay McDaniel (written with editing help from Open AI)
"And I Shall Have
Some Peace There"
"A Way to Garden"
Gardening is (Woo-Woo!)
My Moving Meditation"
The Soul of a Gardener:
Margaret Roach
About Margaret Roach
Margaret Roach turned a life in big-league media into a life in the garden. She spent years as an editor and writer at places like The New York Times and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, shaping how Americans think about homes, kitchens, and style.
Then she walked away from the corporate world and chose something slower, greener, and wonderfully dirt-under-the-fingernails. These days she is:
A passionate garden writer and photographer - Host of the long-running public radio show and podcast A Way to Garden - Author of beloved garden books, including A Way to Garden and And I Shall Have Some Peace There -Caretaker of a wildlife-friendly garden in upstate New York
Her whole thing is gardening not as landscaping perfection but as relationship. She loves native plants, habitat gardening, bird friends, and letting a little wildness remain wild. She has this gentle humor about the fact that gardeners are always collaborating with—never controlling—nature. Which means she often ends up learning from the plants themselves.