By Blake Davis

"A tree’s beauty lies in its branches, but its strength lies in its roots." — Matshona Dhliwayo

I’m learning that if I’m willing to slow down, if I take most problems to the garden I can typically follow the leaves and branches of any issue down its trunk, tracing the line until I find its roots.
Roots don’t just hold a tree in place. They grow in the dark and quiet, thickening, locking in the soil, intertwining with others and feeding the life above. Some trees even grow “stress wood”, denser and stronger from enduring wind and weather. 

That’s been on my mind lately.

A few weeks ago, over coffee at The Well, a friend and I swapped stories about growing up on farms- he in the Midwest, me between the Tri-Cities of Tennessee.
He told me about the time his father tipped over a tractor.

He said over several nights, a friend came over to “help.” They didn’t lift anything, they just stood there night after night staring at the issue. Every so often taking a sip of a beer and saying “Well… you know we could try….”

Earlier this summer, while working in the yard to prepare for a birthday gathering, I tried to move a massive concrete planter filled with soil and plants despite having a bad back.
My back doctor scolded me, saying I should have known better. She’s right. My pride and eagerness for progress overrode my better judgment. I could have waited. I should have asked for help.

It’s the same with any big, tipped-over thing in life. Sometimes the work is showing up beside someone else, not rushing the fix, letting the shared time sink roots before the visible change takes place.

That truth has been shaping conversations within my family. We’re raising young children, busy with dual careers and still grieving the sudden loss of a close friend who was taken ten months ago, just days after my youngest son was born. Loss like that reshapes the landscape. When deep-rooted relationships are torn away, they leave a hole that no quick planting can fill. You can’t replace the nutrients of time in an established garden. 

It’s caused us to start asking: Who are our thirty-year friends? Who will we still be running beside decades from now? Whose will be the roots so deeply embedded beside ours that they naturally grow next to us as we stare at tipped-over problems, more focused on standing side by side to make a good plan than rushing to the solution. 

I think of my uncle in Atlanta, who has been in the same running group for over thirty years. In their eighties, it’s more of a shuffle than a run- but the pace isn’t the point. Decades of showing up together, rain or shine, have created a network of roots, strengthened to weather every season. 

That’s why, with the old saying about ‘the best time to plant a tree’ in mind, I gathered a few men for a regular breakfast. I wrote intentional questions to skip small talk, and it worked. We went deep. But a few months in, one of them said, “What if we actually did something together? Could we meet at each other’s houses and knock out some projects before work?”

It was a great idea. And now, we rotate between homes and gardens, tackling whatever’s on the list of the host for that week. When my turn came, I faced a patch under pine trees thick with poison ivy… something I’d been picking at alone with a headlamp after the kids went to bed, unable to outpace the growth.
That Thursday morning my friends showed up. We grabbed pitchforks and shovels, spread a mountain of dropped mulch and by 8:30 it was done. 

I feel like gardening is often considered a solitary activity. But I’ve seen the Master Gardeners descend in droves on a problem. And I’ve started to organize my projects into “pot work” and “ground work.”
Pot work is the quiet, meditative stuff I do alone. Ground work is the heavy lifting saved for the community. The kind that thrives with extra hands, shared ideas, and laughter. 

After all, a plant in a nursery pot can stay alive for awhile, but without intention, it will dry out or its roots will circle and choke its growth. It reaches its full potential only when connected to the soil, able to reach out and weave into a broader ecosystem built to flourish and expand. 

That’s why I’m challenging myself to make time for other’s gardens. At first, it felt like a sacrifice- it makes sense that less time on my own projects would feel limiting. But when my turn comes for the project swap, I’m always astonished at how much shared effort can achieve, and how much deeper I feel my roots grow.

 

But the biggest benefit has been the memories. The serviceberry trees I planted alone hold core memories of my daughter reaching for juneberries as a baby from her old backpack carrier. But the greenhouse platform I built with my son’s godmother -the friend we lost last October- carries sacred memories from the entire Saturday we spent working side by side to build it.
Now as my son grows, his memories of his Godmother are fading. But the trees she helped me plant are also growing, and will continue to take root in the narrative of his life as he sits under the canopy of their leaves, just because she asked if there was anything she could help with in my yard, and I said yes. 

Because in the end, the roots we’ve grown through laughter, loss, and shared labor are the ones that will hold us steady when the winds come. 

If there is anyone in the Master Gardeners group you have a friendship with, and you know you are both inundated with projects, invite them to do a project swap. You might be surprised at how much you’re able to get done when two or more are gathered.
And you’ll be deepening the roots of relationship and connection at the same time. Even if you’re just standing staring at a problem, sipping a beer and saying “You know, we could try..”