Garden of imperfections

Throughout my years living at home, my mom would call me from my room to do chores like washing the dishes, sweeping the floors, vacuuming the carpet and wiping the dinner table. Come spring and summer, there’s a chore I did more than any other: gardening. Specifically, plucking weeds and trimming dead leaves in our yard. As long as it wasn’t raining outside, even if the heat index was in the high 90s, I was responsible for keeping our garden in pristine condition.

Now, you must be thinking, my mom must have sat at home reaping the fruits of my labor without having to move an inch. In reality, she’s spent the past few years fixating on how to design the perfect yard. She took it upon herself — self-conscious that we appeared less well-off than our neighbors — to embark on a home improvement project. After I came home from school this summer, I watched her spend her free time planting roses, hydrangeas and calla lilies, trying her hardest to fill the empty spaces where tall trees once stood. She would stay out late pulling weeds in the backyard and come back in the house with poison ivy stings. She left the front yard to me since there wasn’t any poison ivy there (an interesting way to show motherly love). Rather than seeing the red marks on her wrists as nuisances, she wore them as battle scars to signify her dedication to her garden.    

Despite the nasty reputation that weeds have — weeds can actually play a crucial part in enhancing the health of gardens. They’ve been cited as a way to improve soil health by adding biomass, diversifying the ecosystem and controlling pests.

It is commonly said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and our perception of plants might also be applied to this. The widespread ads that praise monocultures of vibrant and verdant grass suggest anything that looks unwanted must be exterminated. Ironically, most times what we deem as undesirable can actually turn out to be something beautiful. Placed in another light, weeds could be seen as the opposite of a nuisance, with their versatile uses in herbal medicine and their role in maintaining a healthy ecosystem. 

A great example of the utility of weeds is their significant role in pollinator gardens, which are designed to attract pollinators and exist to combat the decline of pollinators, whose populations are threatened by environmental destruction, disease and parasites. Commonly touted plants to grow in these gardens include charming flowers like lavender and anise hyssop. Surprisingly, what’s often neglected in the “how to cultivate a pollinator” guides are common weeds, which are also the easiest to incorporate into the garden (because they’re always there). The dandelions, clovers and ground ivy you once tried so hard to get rid of could be key to attracting nature’s beautifying agent: pollinators. 

For the average college student living in an apartment or sharing a house with five or more roommates and no allotted free time, gardening seems like a relatively unrealistic hobby to have. I’ll concede that much. What I will argue instead is that maybe we, as natural critics, should be a little nicer to our gardens and ourselves. 

In a funny way, my mom’s care of her garden is similar to how people treat themselves. Peer pressured by our neighbors, my mom found bothersome imperfections that never seemed to stand out before. Likewise, we don’t usually see a problem with ourselves until social media posts or advertisements point it out. After all, there’s no question about the detrimental effects of media advertising in the beauty industry, especially on teens and adolescents. Oh, and what about the medications people are taking these days for cosmetic purposes? Qualities that used to be perceived as “normal” now stick out to us like a sore thumb. 

The way my mom obsessively pulls out weeds and buys new bags of mulch every summer reminds me of the way I handle my flaws: by picking them out or attempting to hide them, trying to blend into a crowd defined by unclear norms. When I first started getting acne at age 11, I either picked at the marks or hid them underneath my greasy bangs (which only seemed to exacerbate my tragic situation). When I was insecure about how fast my legs were growing compared to the rest of my body in middle school, I wore bigger and longer hoodies that went almost down to my knees. When I felt academically behind my peers in high school, I motivated myself by imagining the worst possible scenarios and guilt tripped myself with the sunk-cost fallacy. Even now, as a 20 year old going into my third year of university, my main coping mechanisms for my insecurities are (unfortunately) either to shove them out of sight or pretend they don’t exist.  

I know I’m not alone in this; studies show that the average American feels insecure five times per day. With an abundance of self-help resources like YouTube and books offering a step-by-step guide to self-improvement, it’s increasingly easy to put “the best version of yourself” on a pedestal, trying to weed out perceived flaws. I’m all for personal growth and finding a “better me”; however, if interpreted the wrong way, these resources can become insidious promotions for the human version of weed killers. By framing ourselves as projects, our flaws become ugly problems to deal with, not a feature of our humanity.  

And what are we even getting out of doing all that work to unwire our quirks? Losing the parts of ourselves that build character, resilience and empathy? Even worse, losing an element of our lives that keeps us humble?

It’s a little cliche to say that you should “love yourself” and embrace your imperfections, so I’m going to put a twist on this often-repeated mantra. I don’t think we should be complacent with ourselves, but obsessing over perfection isn’t healthy, either. Although perfectionists tend to be more motivated and self-conscientious, they also have a higher risk of experiencing anxiety, depression and burnout. A strategy that has worked for me, a once self-conscious teen who has (for the most part) overcome perfectionism, is to support my insecurities by leveraging the qualities I’m proud of.  

This past summer, I worked my first internship and learned a lot about myself, both personally and professionally. Before the internship started, we had to take an OutMatch development test that analyzed our strengths and weaknesses in the workplace. I didn’t think much of it when I took the exam, mindlessly clicking through behavioral options that resonated with me, but when I got my results back in a document, things started to click into place. 

Some areas of improvement that the test identified were scenarios when I was required to voice my opinion and be flexible. Rather than showcasing these traits as obstacles that were hindering my ability to be a functioning human in society, the test used the data it gathered to advise me on how to work on situations where I struggled. For instance, I wasn’t good at articulating my thinking or public speaking, but I was good at interpersonal communication. I wasn’t very adaptable in a rapidly changing dynamic workspace, but I was really good at crafting routines and staying organized.  

Instead of using my strong suits as shields to hide my weak spots, the test suggested that I take advantage of them to help me become a more well-rounded worker. Had I tried to hide my flaws like my mom did to her weeds with stones and randomly themed garden gnomes, they probably would’ve sprouted to haunt me later in life. 

I’m not trying to endorse laziness and letting the issue spiral. I’m also not arguing for the eradication of weaknesses by simply “letting your strengths shine.” I guess what I’m trying to say is, don’t let your anxieties get the best of you, and know that there are productive ways to slowly work on them. As humans, we’re growing, blooming and fending off pests, just as gardens do. 

While it is true that weeds can sap resources and nutrients from other plants and make your garden look unkempt, you don’t need to pluck every single weed from the ground. Maybe, the few clumps of weeds you thought were trash could be repurposed sustainably to create medicine, teas or even foods like salads and stews. Just like in gardening, where herbicides intended to kill weeds may damage the surrounding ecosystems, focusing too much on yourself and abolishing all your imperfections can harm your relationship with yourself and those around you. 

Progress always starts somewhere, so let’s nurture every little part of our gardens, not just the pretty parts we want others to see. 

Statement Columnist Michelle Wu can be reached at michewu@umich.edu.

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