By: Blake Davis

As a child I had a favorite spot on a crooked tree by a creek where I’d process the confusion of adolescence by watching water striders and tadpoles, and getting lost in the constant movement of life in a forest.
I grew up on a farm in a rural part of Tennessee where the sky was only ever full of birds, breathtaking sunsets or stars. The noise was different there, a layered and organic hum of life. The wind in the trees, the crack of sticks and leaves from deer hooves and small animal paws were the sounds I knew. I didn’t have context for the continuous whir of airplanes, the startling scream of street-racing cars, or the ever-present churn of construction. 

The nearest neighbor was a quarter of a mile away. I was a kid who could pee wherever I wanted. I could jump buck naked into a river (though why I would I can’t guess, it was always ice cold). Gardening wasn’t something I ever thought of- why would I when there were crawdads to catch, bluffs to climb and crooked trees for sitting and thinking? 

Now, in hindsight, I could tell you the forest was filled with mountain laurel, and I hunted copperheads in groves of glade ferns. I didn’t know their names then-I only knew they were my world to explore. 

My favorite moments were when I’d find a hummingbird moth (Hemaris diffinis) hovering nearby, its wings buzzing so fast it seemed suspended in time. My whole world would freeze as I watched this fairy-like creature flicker around me, a quiet miracle I never knew to be rare. 

But time moved on. I was swept into the all-encompassing stages of life- leaving home, learning trades, struggling towards stability, building a livelihood, then a marriage, then a family.
And my mom had to sell the farm when times got hard. 

Through it all, I knew someday I’d scrape enough together to own my own house and soil, and then I could have my own peaceful, quiet spot again. 

What I didn’t realize as a small-town kid was that if you marry a city girl in an urban county, unless she’s a Cheek or a Vanderbilt, the land you start off with is not likely to be a dense evergreen forest within the city limits. 

So after I finally achieved that grand dream of home ownership, this farm boy had a rude awakening when I stepped out of my newly bought ranch home in a bathrobe and discovered there were six angles of neighbors who could see me in my backyard. 

I had to find another way to carve out a feeling of solitude without the budget for a fence. 

The First Attempt

The first attempt was a valid -though ignorant- effort. 

I sourced 36 small arborvitae from a nursery and spent a record-hot Saturday with a rented auger, attempting to create a barrier between my yard and the rest of the world. 

I assumed this would fix the issue, so I confidently planted these three-foot trees, which I was confident would grow into an impenetrable barrier blocking all airplane and construction noise while hiding me from all my neighbors. Then I could find peace again.

I built a pergola from scrap wood to hide in. I dug. I planted bushes. I wanted a sense of enclosure, a green refuge where my kids could run barefoot without an audience. I waited. I checked those arborvitae every day for the first few weeks. I realized I had no idea what the heck I was doing. 

Then I joined the Master Gardeners, and everything started to shift. 

The Unexpected Outcome

One of my favorite skills I learned as a farm boy (that I hated when I was a farm boy) is that chores must be done no matter the weather or discomfort. 

Animals must be fed and watered, even if it takes dragging half-frozen water buckets across a field in eight inches of snow.
The outcome is that as an adult, my neighbors will often see me out at 11pm with a headlamp in 30 degree weather. I became “the weird gardening guy.”

To my surprise, they began stopping me when they drove by to tell me what they were beginning to plant and ask me to help them plan. 

I planted trees in neighbors' yards. 

I won over a particularly grouchy neighbor when I kept offering fresh flowers from my garden. 

The deeper I plugged into the community of Master Gardeners—whose passion and excitement for the work were contagious—the less I focused on building walls and more on opening doors and sharing the abundance that gardening brings.
It occurred to me this would be incredibly difficult if I didn’t live in an urban setting, surrounded by neighbors. 

This humbled me. It also made me feel fraudulent as a newly minted Master Gardener as I met this community of passionate, kind and generous members, the best of plant nerds. 

A Garden That Gives Back

My plans have only ever become more audacious.

After three years of building the yard, creating spaces to sit and connect with friends, and growing plants to share with others, my wife and I found a house just a few minutes farther from the city with three times the land and mature trees around the back yard.

It’s a dream I didn’t think I could see living in Davidson County. 

We listed the house and its messy, scrappy yard, and just so happened we sold it to an incoming Master Gardener.

The garden I built in an attempt to hide is now being nurtured, expanded, and shared by someone who knew exactly what to do with it, something I took five years to discover. 

As I packed up the very last of the moving trailer and took one final look to say farewell to the garden where I discovered my passion and numerous mistakes- something caught my eye. 

A flicker of motion. 

Hovering between the hostas I had planted but would no longer tend, I saw little wings buzzing so fast they seemed suspended in time.

It was the first and only hummingbird moth I’ve seen since leaving my childhood farm. 

In that moment I wept. 

Gardening in an urban space isn’t about building walls to close ourselves in to hide from neighbors, it’s about creating an oasis. A place where life, in all its forms, can pause and find nourishment. For a hummingbird moth, it’s a rare bloom in an ever-shrinking ecosystem. For friends and neighbors, it’s a space to connect with life and each other-a reason to stop, to breathe and to belong.