✦ BONFERRONI ✦

I grow lavender in my corridor, an atrocious west-facing location that is shrouded in the morning, baked by a scorching afternoon sun, and blasted by bellowing belches of sea wind from the Labrador coast. Joy of joys. After too many trips to plant nurseries and doling out "tuition fees", I finally have something stable going on and friends have asked me to share how I've managed to make growing lavender in Singapore happen.

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Before I do, I'm going to share some of the contemplations I derived, elaborating upon this metaphor mostly in the moments where I was breathing in perlite dust and clipping dead lavender leaves, whilst regretting all the things. As one does. It's poisoning of the mind!

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What I've learnt from growing lavender is that 
cultivating people is a little like cultivating plants.

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​ON THERAPY

• Psychodynamic therapy focuses on the roots of our being. I very quickly learnt the adage 'healthy roots make healthy plants' as a newbie hobbyist gardener. There was root rot and water-logging, soil aeration and compaction, and soil pH. Roots were at once a finicky yet resilient body part. There was the matter of not damaging the root ball, which was pretty much the core of the plant. You could trim off unhealthy roots and surround them with new, nurturing soil, which you'd water so the roots would accept the new material, and grow into it.

• Cognitive therapy focuses on matters at the head level. The crown of our plants, of course, are the leaves. CBT is like amending and removing unhelpful bits, such as removing yellowing leaves that may harbour and spread fungal disease, or stymieing pest infestations. I nearly lost my 4-year-old butterfly pea plant to spider mites! I thought the speckled, wilting and stunted foliage was due to under-watering, so I watered furiously, which only further stressed the plant.

• Solution-focused therapy is about important and practical fix-its! Some plant problems may simply involve moving the plant to a different location (e.g. one that's less/more sunny, windier, etc.) and there's nothing wrong with the plant system itself that needed therapying.

• Humanistic psychology is about the fibres of our being. It holds steadfast that an acorn's nature is to grow into a mighty oak. My favourite psychology article by far and away is Can Happiness be Taught? by Dr. Martin Seligman, where in this case, an Amazonian lizard's nature is to stalk and shred.
  
  Ultimately, each approach to psychotherapy across the spectrum and praxis, has it uses. Being dogmatic to orthodoxy isn't wise and misses the big picture.

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ON DAILY LIFE

• Routines. Plants are regulated by a circadian rhythm too. How about that? I had wondered for a while if I was really observing sudden growth spurts overnight every morning when I checked on my plants. I found out that my African violet needed to have at least eight hours of darkness to activate florigen, its flowering hormone. It's just like the importance of establishing for ourselves proper sleep hygiene.

• Hygiene. Pruning, pinching, and deadheading all lead to healthier growth. Self-care is really about looking after yourself and doing the things you need to do even when it's hard, and aspects of hygiene (brushing your teeth!, showering!) can often be a struggle during bad mental health days.

• Social support. Welcome plant friends, and embrace the good and bad that comes with them! Butterflies, caterpillars, bees, and snails have visited my garden. Ladybirds, earthworms and predator mites are great plant friends if you have access to these. Fellow companion plants are also friends: the nitrogen-fixing pea + supportive corn + mulching squash form the Three Sisters.

• Ecology. Growing lavender in Singapore is metal, pain, and suffering precisely because it's not meant for tropical climes¹. Another gardening adage I've learnt and adhered to since is don't choose plants you like, but choose plants that suit your location. I now grow local flowers such as bunga kesidang (bread flower), melati putih (sambac jasmine), bunga raya (hibiscus), thuốc lào (wild tobacco), vanilla, and bunga telung (butterfly pea). This is pretty much the namesake of ecological system theories where the understanding of individuals is contextually sited within their community, society, and wider environment.

• Don't be afraid of technology and innovation. Upside-down planting? Go for it.

• Resilience. More is not more! Over-fertilising, over-watering, shallow planting, and other iterations of anxiety will stifle plants. Some seeds need to be buried snugly for healthy root formation, for example.

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Japanese farmer-philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka remarked,
"The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops,
but the cultivation and perfection of human beings."