11 Gardeners Who Turned Soil Into Kindness and Happiness: Mom’s Mint Garden, 25-Cent Seed Packet That Grew 300 Pounds of Tomatoes and a Vegetable Wedding Bouquet

The best things a gardener plants are the ones that keep coming back, and kindness is one of them. Getting your hands in the soil may even lift your mood. Researchers at the University of Bristol found that a common soil bacterium, Mycobacterium vaccae, activated serotonin-producing brain cells in mice, the same mood-related system many antidepressants work on.
From a mother’s secret message hidden in a backyard full of mint to pansies planted in potholes, these stories show how a simple gardening hobby can grow kindness and happiness for everyone around it.

• My granddaughter’s wedding budget in Lynchburg, Virginia didn’t leave room for flowers. So Grandpa grew them, sort of. In early spring, he planted rainbow chard, purple kale, dill, lavender and sweet peas, timing everything for her June wedding. Her bouquet was the most beautiful thing at the reception, and it smelled like his garden. Every table had a mason jar of his herbs, and the guests took them home. 💐

• Mom planted mint all over the backyard her last summer. Gardeners never do that cause mint takes over everything. And Mom was a master gardener.
  After she passed away, I looked down from her bedroom window. Mint everywhere, except in bare lines. They spelled: CALL SISTER.
  My sister and I hadn’t spoken in six years, not since an argument after Dad’s service that neither of us could even explain anymore. Mom knew it was the one thing she couldn’t fix from her bed.
  I went down to the yard and finally understood.
  The “bare lines” were old red bricks, sunk flush with the soil in the shape of letters. Mint can’t root through brick, so it grew everywhere else and left her words standing. From the ground, it just looked like a messy brick path. You could only read it from her window.
  That evening, our neighbor’s son, Jonah, who’s 15, admitted he’d laid every brick. Mom had paid him in cookies and sworn him to secrecy. He said, “She picked mint because nothing can stop it. You can pull it up a hundred times and it keeps coming back. She said some things are like that.”
  I called my sister that night. She was quiet for a long time. Then she drove six hours.
  We stood at Mom’s window together, and she laughed and cried at the same time. “Of course she used mint,” she said. “Mom always said family is the plant you can’t get rid of.”
  That weekend, we made a pitcher of Mom’s mint iced tea and sat on the porch until midnight. Now my sister comes every June, and we trim the mint back from the letters together, so the message never fades.

• I was away for a week last June when a heat wave hit Phoenix, Arizona. When I got home, the hanging ferns on my porch were thriving. Taped to the door was a sticky note: “They looked thirsty, so I watered them every day. — Jacob, your delivery driver.”
  He’d used water bottles from his own truck. Now every summer there’s a cooler of cold drinks on my porch with his name on it.

• At our wedding in 2019, instead of candy, we gave every guest a packet of wildflower seeds with a tag: “Plant us and send a photo.” We didn’t expect much.
  Six years later, we’ve gotten photos from 7 states. My aunt in Texas sends one every April, and a coworker’s daughter planted hers at her school. Our wedding is still blooming.

• My 16-year-old needed 50 hours of supervised driving practice, and I work nights. Our neighbor in Missoula, Montana, Mr. Haskins, who’s 74, offered to ride with her on one condition: she’d help in his vegetable garden every Saturday. All summer, she weeded, picked green beans and hauled compost, then drove him to the hardware store and back.
  She passed her driving test in August. Now she drives him to the farmers market every Saturday, and she still helps in his garden. “Best deal I ever made,” he says.

• Our street in Buffalo, New York had potholes for two years. Then one spring morning, every pothole had pansies in it. Someone had filled them with soil and planted flowers overnight. The city fixed the street within a month.
  We caught the mystery gardener at dawn the day before the repair crew came, carefully digging the pansies back up. It was our 82-year-old neighbor, Meredith. She replanted every one of them along the curb. “I just wanted the city to notice,” she said. They did.

• After his school food drive, my 8-year-old came home upset. The food pantry table had cans and pasta, but no fresh vegetables. So he spent 25 cents on a packet of tomato seeds and asked his grandpa for help.
  Grandpa has a big backyard in Shreveport, Louisiana and 40 years of gardening behind him. Together they started all 28 seeds on a windowsill, and every one sprouted. My son watered the plants every evening and kept a notebook of every tomato they picked.
  By the end of the summer, they’d harvested more than 300 pounds, all of it donated to the food pantry. The director sent him a thank-you card with a photo of the families choosing his tomatoes. This spring, he bought two packets.