The Top 10 Similarities between helping People to Grow and Growing a Flower Garden

Originally Submitted on 10/21/97.

There are many analogies between the growth of people and of plants. Perhaps they are more than just metaphors. The skills and qualities needed for growing plants seem to transfer to helping people to grow. Most central to both is the need for patience.

1. Plants need the sun the way people need love. Some can live with less, some can't, but that's their nature. It's no good telling them to *toughen up.* If they need it in order to thrive, then they need it.

2. Plants thrive in light. People thrive in the knowledge that they matter, that their actions have some effect, that they have some significance to someone, somewhere.

3. Plants need fertilizer to grow and expand. One part of fertilizer is nitrogen, essential for growth. This can be seen as similar to the knowledge and skills with which people's minds and abilities need to be nourished.

4. Another part of fertilizer is phosphorus, which helps the plant to develop roots. Just as nitrogen is useless to plants unless they have the roots that enable them to remain grounded and stable, so knowledge and ability are of little use to people unless they can develop the self-confidence needed to use those abilities.

5. Plants need moisture. Without it they cannot lift the nutrients into their cells. They become weak and cannot stand upright, or they become brittle and break easily. People need encouragement, affirmation. Even the most self-confident people eventually lose heart if there is nobody who believes in them. Without that they weaken and cannot hold up their heads in the world, or else they become bitter, cynical and brittle.

6. Plants can be smothered by weeds and other growth that crowds in on them. People can be smothered by negativity, tolerations, and boundary invaders.

7. When plants are new, young, having not yet established roots and strength, they need a great deal of tending and protection from these invasions. People who have not yet learned to set boundaries and to deal with tolerations and negativity for themselves also need to be tended and helped by those around them to deal with similar invasions.

8. Stronger, tougher plants, well-established, can withstand more, so that the gardener can safely give them less time and attention, but must not ignore them entirely. The same goes for people.

9. These better established plants can even find their own nutrients and moisture, for they have learned to put their roots down deep into their environment, and their branches high to the sun, to seek them. People can also learn to find their own nutriments, to take responsibility for getting their own needs satisfied, their own affirmations of worth.

10. Plants take time to grow in beauty, to fulfill the potential given them by their genetic heritage and enabled by their environment. Given the right care and environment, and time, a stringy little sliver of a plant can become a strong, healthy, and even useful contributor, a joy to behold. People also.

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