Gardening in late adulthood

Jill Severn

In a recent issue of The Atlantic, Jonathon Rauch reviews two books about what it means to be over 65 in America. Here’s one of its cheerier bits of data:

“Eighty is the new 68, inasmuch as the mortality rate of 80-year-old American women in 2019 was the same as that of 68-year-old women in 1933.”

That’s just the beginning of the good news: “Copious evidence shows that most of what people think they know about life after 50 is wrong. Rauch points out that “Right now, Americans are receiving more than a decade of additional time in the most satisfying and prosocial period of life.”

This may taste sour for those whose lives run counter to the trend. Disease, injury or a friend’s death can make life hard at any age. There’s a lot of gray area not just on our heads but inside them.

Nonetheless, Rauch and the authors he’s reviewing* believe it’s arbitrary to label all our years after 65 as “old.” The researchers’ new term, “late adulthood” applies to the years — sometimes decades — when we are healthy enough to be reasonably physically active and passionate about something — for instance, gardening, painting, politics, or helping kids learn to read. Some people in this category still work, often part time, doing things like writing columns.

This stage of life, Rauch reports, “brings gains, too: greater equanimity, more emotional resilience, and what Carstensen and others have called the positivity effect, a heightened appreciation of life’s blessings. Partly for that reason, the later decades of life are, on average, not the saddest but the happiest. Contrary to popular belief, aging does not bring mental stagnation. Older people can learn and create, although their styles of learning and creativity are different than in younger years. Emotional development and maturation continue right through the end of life. And aging can bring wisdom—the ability to rise above self-centered viewpoints, master turbulent emotions, and solve life’s problems—a boon not only to the wise but to everyone around them.”

We would all like to believe this. And with a little effort, maybe we can help it be true just by trying to live up to those lofty statements about creativity, learning, maturity and wisdom. The garden is, of course, a great place to do so.

In fact, late adulthood can be a time of Peak Gardening — a point in our lives when we finally have time to devote to a gardening passion that had simmered on the back burner of our lives while we were working full time, and often caring for kids, our own older parents, and friends.

There is extra joy in the extra time. And more time inevitably means more growth in our own gardening skills. Better yet, it promotes an ever-closer relationship with the natural world on our little piece of planet  earth. That, it’s safe to say, is an important path to wisdom.

Extra time also means we make progress in getting things done when they need to be done, because we actually have time to do them. Slugs and snails suffer; basil and lettuce benefit.

Our gardens expand, contract, or hold their shape depending on where we are on the continuum between ambition for more, the desire to simplify, or contentment with the status quo

Even diminished stamina, which requires taking more frequent breaks, helps build our expertise, because resting on a bench means more time spent just looking. This apparent idleness sharpens our skill of focused observation — of plants, bees, butterflies, color combinations, the movements of the sun, and leaf forms. Idle moments also spawn new insights, and often add to our growing store of wisdom on all sorts of topics.

And when we get up from the bench, all the bending, stretching, digging and moving we do surely must contribute to an extended late adulthood, and keep us limber longer.

Limber late adulthood gardeners are probably better dancers, too. We should do a citizen science project to research whether this is true. If you know some graying gardeners, ask them to dance, and keep careful data. Surely, someday, someone will want to publish research on this subject.

*The two books Rauch reviewed are Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Age by James Chappel, and The Longevity Imperative: How to Build a Healthier and More Productive Society to Support our Longer Lives by Andrew J. Scott

Jill Severn writes from her home in Olympia, where she grows vegetables, flowers, and a small flock of chickens. She loves conversation among gardeners. Start one by emailing her at  jill@theJOLTnews.com