By JASON GRAVES
K-State Research and Extension Central District Horticulturist
Thanksgiving invites us to slow down and reflect on gratitude—a practice that doesn’t always come easily amid the busyness of daily life. In my experience, gratitude is much like a garden: it needs patience, care, and intentionality to grow and thrive truly.
In my daily work with gardeners here in central Kansas, I’ve noticed a shared trait: generosity. Gardeners freely share their time, resources, and wisdom, seeing abundance where others might see only scarcity. I believe this generosity is a natural outgrowth of their gratitude. As they nurture life in their gardens, gratitude also seems to take root and flourish within them.
This is where gardening and gratitude naturally meet. The more time gardeners spend in the planting, growing, and harvesting cycles, the more they see life itself as a series of gifts. And that’s what gratitude truly is: naming everything as a gift.
Gratefulness names something as a gift, and the habit of constantly naming everything in my life as a gift changes me. Even life’s challenges are gifts that shape and refine me. Gratitude is the most potent form of honesty. It isn’t a pair of rose-colored glasses that denies what is hard, it is more like a conjunction or a companion that comes alongside difficulty to give us a much fuller sense of reality in every moment.
Difficulties, when they arise, are not the whole of our existence.
Experienced gardeners understand that not every growing season will go according to plan. A sudden heatwave early in the season can render tomato pollen nonviable, leading to crop failure. A swarm of caterpillars may strip coneflower foliage bare. A strong windstorm might topple even the most beautiful, productive apple tree.
These things happen, and most gardeners I work with refuse to let these challenges make them less than human. They refuse to shrink or lose their sense and awareness of reality. They have learned to name everything as a gift, even the hardships.
When the tomato crop fails due to heat, they turn their attention to the gift of sweet potato vines that laugh at the hot weather and grow even faster. When the swarm of caterpillars is identified as silvery checkerspot larvae, they anticipate the gift of beautiful black, yellow, and orange butterflies that will soon grace their garden. When the storm topples the apple tree, they mourn the loss but also see the gift of a new opportunity to plant even more sun-loving native flowers to build biodiversity in their landscape.
Thanksgiving season is the perfect time to cultivate gratitude with renewed intentionality. It begins with slowing down and naming everything as a gift. In doing so, we practice the most potent form of honesty—and, like a well-tended garden, our gratitude will grow and flourish.