To fully experience gardening, you must hear what you are doing

by Gina Briggs, JD, LLM, Executive Editor, Quiet Coalition, Legal Advisory Council, Quiet Communities

Photo credit: cottonbro studio

We often blog about new studies that show how noise destroys hearing, inhibits the life cycle of animals or adversely affects overall health. But one aspect of noise that we don’t often discuss is how it interferes with the full enjoyment of certain experiences like birding, walking or gardening. 

For me, gardening is a full sensory experience — I love every aspect of it. I will admit to spending more time than necessary investigating tools I can use in the garden. Given that I live in Brooklyn and I am limited to what I can do at my community garden, I have more tools than I really need.

There is something meditative about using a hand tool that was designed for a specific purpose and feels just right in your hands. Whether it is a perfectly-sized shovel for digging a hole to plant a tree, a pair of finely-honed shears for sculpting a bush or a trowel that makes easy work of transplanting seedlings or eliminating weeds, the right tool should not only help you finish your task but should also allow you to enjoy the work as you do it. 

The design and balance of the tools is paramount, but something we rarely consider is the sound they make as you use them. These are sounds that are difficult to hear if a helicopter is hovering overhead or if street traffic is particularly heavy, but on those few occasions when the garden is quiet there is a pleasure in hearing the efforts of your work. The sound of a trowel digging into the dirt, pruners snipping errant twigs and shears making short work of overgrown bushes are all distinct. Joined with the natural sounds around them, they create a comforting soundscape. 

I remember one spring when three or four friends joined me at the garden to clean up our plots and plant spring vegetables. The garden was quiet for most of the morning. Birdsong mixed with our chatter and the sounds of plots being cleared, planted and readied for the spring. We had an hour or two of relative quiet as we worked and chatted without having to raise our voices. When we finished there was a feeling of disappointment that our tasks were completed and our work was done. 

The thought of using a gas-powered leaf blower in the garden or any power tool when a hand tool will do is upsetting to me. Loud disruptive noises do not make sense in natural settings. Before the industrial revolution changed farming by replacing animals with machines, agriculture was a relatively quiet activity. With industrial progress we have been exposed to more and more noise and told that noise is natural, even though we know that it is not. Along with a jarring assault of our senses, we also lose the opportunity to hear the natural sounds that have existed uninterrupted for millenia.

If you enjoy gardening, I suggest that you replace power tools with well-made hand tools. Using them may extend the length of the task, but will make it more enjoyable without the jarring sounds of power tools. For those who see gardening as simply a task that must be done, why not make that task less tedious by removing the distraction of noise and focusing on the full experience at hand. Even if you don’t enjoy the work, there is something about using well-made tools that might just make your tasks more enjoyable. 

For anyone new to gardening, or for those of you who want to fall in love with it, I can suggest two garden tool companies that manufacture beautiful and durable tools: Sneeboer Tools and Niwaki. Many of their products can be found at the Garden Tool Company, Gardenheir and a handful of other stores.