May Garden Days
Commemorate the Gifts from the Garden Every Day in May
MAY 1st is Garden Bouquet Day
The garden offers an ongoing source of bouquets that will bring color and cheer into the house. Cut branches from shrubs, pick spring-flowering bulbs or perennials to bring cheer to the bedroom, bath or kitchen. Make small bouquets and tie them with a ribbon or put them in a cone made of paper (recycle old calendars or other paper for this!) and place them on a neighbor’s doorstep. Ring the doorbell and run! It is May Day, after all.
MAY 2nd is Discover Nature in Your Garden Day
Learn how nature works in your own back yard. Today we celebrate how your garden is the first place to look for instruction on plants and wildlife.
May 3rd is Garden Meditation Day
Let go of your concerns and center your full attention on the garden for even a few minutes today…focusing on weeding, tilling the soil or cleaning up the garden is a relaxing way to direct your concentration on just one thing.
May 4th is Backyard Edibles Day
You don’t need a full-scale vegetable garden to enjoy fresh food from your landscape. Plant some edible plants in and among your flowers or foundation plants, and harvest the freshest food on earth in the coming summer.
May 5th is Garden Fitness Day
You will grow fitness and flowers when you spend some time gardening every week. Planting, raking, and other garden tasks are really workout routines disguised as yard chores. Who needs a gym? Plant a garden!
May 6th is Garden Celebrations Day
Plan a celebration in your garden…be it a wedding, a good report card, or the arrival of spring, your backyard is the perfect place for a party. Hang ribbons or paper lanterns from the trees, and place pots of flowering plants on the deck or patio, and rejoice in your blessings.
May 7th is Garden View Day
Colorful gardens make you smile as you pull into your driveway, wash dishes at the kitchen sink, and look out the living room windows. Today is the day to add a plant to your garden and improve your own private room with a view.
May 8th is Garden Colors Day
We all remember how pleasurable it was to have a new box of crayons and to paint with watercolors when we were children. Using color with abandon is fun. Enjoy yourself today by planting some colorful flowers or placing bright ornaments in the garden.
May 9th is Fragrant Gardening Day
Aromatherapy? It all started in the garden. Plant fragrant flowers near your decks, patios and bedroom windows. Pick aromatic foliage for bouquets and use fragrant plants in between flagstones and along paths.
May 10th is Gab in the Garden Day
The garden is the perfect place to for a soothing chat. Make sure that you provide comfortable seating, and a pot of tea never hurts either…sit with family or friends in surroundings conducive to a satisfying tête-à-tête.
May 11th is Gardening for Wildlife Day
What we do in our yards and gardens can help keep our surroundings in balance. Natural predators keep animals and insects from becoming pests in the garden and maintain the equilibrium of our environment. Plant a wide variety of plants, including many that are native to your area.
May 12th is Cultivating Creativity Day
Our landscapes kindle our artistic juices. Because they are beautiful, gardens stimulate our imagination. Get inspired…get into the garden!
May 13th is Garden Music Day
The natural sounds in your garden can be very soothing. Spend some time listening to the soundtrack from your garden: the birds, the bugs and the breezes.
May 14th is God is in the Garden Day
Whether we are working in our yards or just sitting in a beautiful park or landscape, the garden is a life-affirming place where we feel closer to spirit. Whether you are actively praying or simply stilling your thoughts by focusing on nature, the garden is the perfect place to feel God’s presence.
May 15th is Gardening With Children Day
Eat a cherry tomato fresh off the vine, plant giant sunflowers, or make a leaf-lined stick house for the fairies…the garden is filled with fun for kids and adults. Provide the children in your life the gift of gardening, and you will receive as much as you give.
May 16th is A Kaleidoscope of Color Day
The wonderful thing about a garden is that it is constantly changing. We can never be bored when our surroundings transform from minute to minute and day to day. Appreciate the continually varying flowers, forms and foliage in action in your own backyard.
May 17th is Gardening for Gold Day
Maintaining a beautiful landscape makes sense economically…no matter where you live, a beautiful landscape adds to your home’s worth. Increase your property value: plant a garden!
May 18th is Growing Stress Reduction Day
There’s no doubt about it, it’s a taxing world, so get outside! Working in the garden can relieve tension and worry, and we can all use more of that in our lives.
May 19th Cultivating Connectedness Day
All over the earth and through the ages people have tended gardens…we share this activity with all cultures throughout history. Today we honor our gardens and the connections that it makes to others.
May 20th Gardening for Community Day
Gardening brings people together in generous ways. From the garden clubs that are involved in civic beautification programs and the volunteer Master Gardeners who assist the gardening public to the neighbor who shares pieces of perennials, there is something about gardening that cultivates generosity.
May 21st Growing Light in the Garden Day
Many plants catch rays of sunlight in the early morning and late afternoon, illuminating areas of the garden in a way that is guaranteed to lift your spirits. Place grasses or plants that have golden foliage where they will capture the rays of the sun.
May 22nd Growing Flavor in the Garden Day
It doesn’t take many plants to make an herb garden, and there is nothing like fresh herbs to improve dinner. Fresh herbs are an easy and healthy way of adding flavors to your meals…plant them in the garden or in pots on a windowsill, and soon you’ll have savory seasonings.
May 23rd Harvesting Healing Day
The therapeutic benefits of gardening have been well documented, so hospitals, nursing homes and rehabilitation centers frequently plant gardens for their patients and their families. Your home garden can be just as curative.
May 24th is Garden Environment Day
Concerns about a healthy planet should start in the garden. Today is the day to start growing organically, conserving water and planting trees. You may not be able to change the world, but you can control what happens in your own backyard.
May 25th is Enhancing The ‘Hood Day
Gardening is contagious. If you spend time sprucing up your landscape, your neighbors may follow suit. Start something positive…the beauty you sow on your own property might spread to the entire neighborhood.
May 26th is Garden Intelligence Day
In the garden there is always something new to learn. Being involved with plants and gardening keeps your mind working and engaged.
May 27th is Cultivating Comedy Day
Need a good laugh? Get out in the garden. Whether you chuckle at a mistake you’ve made, a delightfully whimsical flower or the antics of the squirrels, being in the garden is sure to kindle your funny bone.
May 28th is Gardeners Practice Patience Day
Gardening is not instant coffee. We usually have to wait for perennials to mature, for a tree to flower and for fruit to form. Sometimes it takes longer then expected, and other times the plants never achieve the desired results. We are in partnership with Mother Nature in the garden, and she is the majority stockholder. Much of life is beyond our control and the garden is a great place to perfect serenity and fortitude.
May 29th is Garden Motion Day
The garden provides us with surroundings where there is constant movement. Grasses sway in the wind, birds and butterflies flit in and out, and plants grow and change from spring to fall. From minute to minute things change in the landscape: take some time today to watch the show.
May 30th is Garden Amazement Day
Our gardens are filled with delightful surprises. A self-seeded perennial, sparkling frost coating the edge of scarlet leaves, or a group of beautiful flowers can charm us when we least expect it. Get into your backyard and see what’s new and wonderful.
May 31st is Gardens of Life Day
There is nothing like a garden to remind us that everything is connected. Birth, growth and death…beauty and destruction…it’s all growing in the garden. Celebrate the circle of life by planting a garden today.