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2025 - The Year of the Gardener
What gardeners could teach coaches about coaching
Samuel McKenzie
February 10, 2025
*Not my Grandma’s Garden
Growing up I spent many hours watching my grandma tend to her garden. Though it did involve a lot of me apologising for walking through her hydrangeas to find the cricket ball…
While she was an avid gardener, I think the green thumb gene skipped me. I mean, as I am writing this, I have tried to think of a gardening take on the old “I can’t even tell my (flower) from my (another flower)” - but I don’t have a frame of reference to even come up with one!
I was back in New Zealand for her 80th birthday in October and (of course) the garden was looking fantastic for her party. Looking out over the garden I thought about how much skill it must take to have so many different types of plants and flowers all flourishing. It struck me that gardeners have a lot to teach coaches about helping people reach their potential.
A gardener is a facilitator of the environment
Sir Ken Robinson - educator, author, and deliverer of the number one most viewed Ted Talk of all time, wrote in his book Creative Schools,
“Gardeners know that they don’t make plants grow. They don’t attach the roots, glue the leaves, and paint the petals. Plants grow themselves. The job of the gardener is to create the best conditions for that to happen. Good gardeners create those conditions, and poor ones don’t.”
You can’t yell at a flower to make it grow faster. The role of a gardener isn’t to “motivate” a plant. The gardener is there to facilitate the best possible environment for the plants to thrive.
Often as coaches we see ourselves as the ones who make the player develop. It’s a big “a-ha” moment when you realise we don’t develop players, but that players develop themselves. This understanding frees us up to step back and play the role of environment facilitator so that everyone has the conditions they need to be at their best.
A gardener tailors their approach to each plant
To create the best conditions for the plants, gardeners have to treat all the plants in their gardens as individuals and tailor their approach accordingly. They don’t expect a rose to behave like a tulip, or a tulip to grow like a sunflower (starting to warm into some more gardening specific references now). They see and accept each plant for what they are and the potential they have. Some plants will require constant watering, while others need to be planted in a specific spot to receive the right amount of sunlight. A certain type of soil mix might be needed for some plants to flourish, while others will be able to grow to their potential regardless of the conditions.
You won’t hear a gardener tell their plants “If you want to be part of this garden, you’re going to have to fit these norms.” The care shown by gardeners (it is described as “tending” to your garden for a reason) is demonstrated in how they manipulate the conditions throughout their garden to give each and every plant the best chance of thriving.
A gardener doesn’t blame the plant
And when it’s not working?
Dutch motivational speaker Alexander de Heijer summed it up,
“When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.”
The plant isn’t blamed by the gardener for not wanting to grow enough or not being committed enough to growing. The gardener doesn’t judge the plant. They are curious, trying to find out why the environment is not helping this particular plant. Then they act as a scientist, experimenting with different combinations of conditions (e.g. sunlight, water, soil mix) to find the right ones for the plant to thrive.
Often in sport environments (particularly team sports) our environments become rigid. A player coming in must adapt themselves to the environment, rather than the environment having the flexibility to adapt itself to ensure it can provide the best support for those coming in. We are very quick to judge and blame the player for not meeting our standards, as opposed to asking ourselves why the environment is not supporting the player and how we could adjust the environment to create better conditions for the player to thrive.
A gardener is patient in the process
In sport, particularly Talent Development, we are often in a rush to accelerate development and get those in the pathway to the elite level. This often ends up with us thinking that because they may end up as elite performers, we should see elite behaviours and performance from them right now. But the key distinction is that they are not elite performers, they are learning to be elite performers. That they are in the process of becoming, is something we need to accept and embrace.
How a gardener appreciates this process is wonderfully summed up by this passage from The Inner Game of Tennis, by Timothy Gallwey,
“When we plant a rose seed in the earth, we notice that it is small, but we do not criticise it as “rootless and stemless.” We treat it as a seed, giving it the water and nourishment required of a seed. When it first shoots up out of the earth, we don’t condemn it as immature and underdeveloped; nor do we criticise the buds for not being open when they appear.
We stand in wonder at the process taking place and give the plant the care it needs at each stage of its development. The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change; yet at each state, at each moment it is perfectly all right as it is.”
Upon reflection, maybe I was wrong to think the green thumb gene hasn’t been passed down to me from my grandma. I just haven’t thought enough about how the lessons from the garden can be applied to the grass of the sports field. This might be the year to really explore it. So, move over the Year of the Snake, for me 2025 is going to be the Year of the Gardener.
Craig Harrison from the Athlete Development Project and Dave Wright from the Player Development Project have a wide-ranging conversation on coaching and the environment you are creating as a coach. Pockets of gold throughout on how you could tend to your environment!
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