How gardening can teach you about the futility of regrets (and about Alzheimer’s)

“I’m not somebody who ever has regrets — I’m a great believer in doing things with the best of intentions, and then you learn rather than regret. There are lots of things I’ve learned by doing the wrong thing, but I don’t regret them.”
— Monty Don

The British gardening expert Monty Don said these words during an interview, when asked if he regretted any gardening mistakes.

His answer may be about his own work in the garden — his home, Longmeadow, in the western Midlands, is often the backdrop of the BBC series Gardeners’ World — but I like how it applies to many other situations.

Monty Don is a fixture in our family. For the last few years, Gardeners’ World has been a balm to my mom in particular.

Mom was for many, many years an avid if not expert gardener. She gradually built up a magnificent garden at the home she and my dad shared in the centre of St. John’s for the better part of six decades.

When I was a kid, we would wait for the late sunsets of summer evenings so we could play spotlight in each others’ yards, hoping to get enough play time in before weary parents would call us home. With my own Mom, I would often give her a goodnight hug in the darkness — that’s because she was still outside, kneeling at one bed or another, weeding or improving the soil of her beloved flowers and plants.

I guess one of my regrets is that I did not learn more about gardening from my Mom at the time. I’ve been learning more and more lately, and I’ve just learned to let those regrets go.

As we move through life after Mom’s diagnosis with Alzheimer’s, watching Monty Don (and his faithful dog, Ned) and the other presenters brings Mom so much joy and comfort. (The show streams on Britbox, which holds a couple of seasons at a time. Even in the dead of winter, all that colour just fills the room.)

The show also stimulates her memories of decades in her own beloved garden, and she’ll often remark about particular plants and what you need to know to get them to thrive in Newfoundland’s tricky climate. Mom, who hosted a local CBC series in the Sixties, will also marvel at what they can do with television cameras and production these days.

But mostly the show just fills her heart. Her garden was always her happy place, and the show seems to put her in just the right spot.

I’ve learned a lot from Monty Don and crew, too, and not just in the technical sense of, say, hardening a tender plant. I like his lesson at the top of his post, and I am leaning toward learning, not regretting. Mom, after all, has taught me many things, and I’m grateful.

Here’s a look at Monty Don’s own garden: