7 ways the state of your garden reflects your personality

Gardening is a primal, sensory experience that allows you to connect with nature, play in the soil, and enjoy the fresh air and sunshine.

Nothing is more relaxing than walking behind your string trimmer and pondering about life.

Despite its universal benefits, gardening is also ruggedly individualistic. Gardens reflect the personalities of the people who create them.

What you plant, how and where you plant it, whether you opt for the formal structure of an English garden or something messier, tangled and whimsical, the end result is like a Rorschach test, the tomatoes and sunflowers colourful inkblots of your personality.

Here are 7 ways in which the state of your garden shows who you are.

1. You’re romantic. If your garden is awash in vibrant pastel colours, say, pink roses and bluebells, features stone topiary in the form of angels and cherubs, and a wedding cake-colored trellis, chances are you have a poetic streak. To you, gardens are places where gentlemen callers declare their love.

2. You’re secretive. You have a walled garden that has a maze of flowering shrubs and trees, and a labyrinth of stone-paved pathways that lead to an inner sanctum where you can escape from the world. In other words, your garden is a recreation of “The Secret Garden” in Frances Hodgson’s Burnett’s classic novel.

3. You’re an Alpha. You have the biggest and brightest garden on the block. Your tomatoes are ten times larger than your neighbour’s tomatoes, and your sunflowers are so tall that Jack, or a mischevious neighbourhood kid, could mistake one for a magic beanstalk and climb to the sky.

4. You’re low maintenance. The garden hasn’t been weeded in weeks. You don’t know where the squash starts and the beans end. The Purpletop Verbena is so large that it looks like one of those plant creatures in “Day of the Triffids.” Just yesterday you swore it tried to reach down and swipe the neighbour’s dog.

5. You’re eclectic. You sacrificed harmony for a global aesthetic. Your garden features the best characteristics of Japanese, Italian and French gardens. It’s bright, busy and chaotic, a visual feast that showcases your rarified tastes.

6. You’re whimsical. Forget horizontal gardens with formal bed lines. You have a vertical garden. It crawls up the side of your garage and looks more like an art installation than a garden, but it yields excellent produce.

7. You’re a foodie. All you have space for is a rooftop garden. But that’s fine because you live in a city and don’t have time for pottering about. Still, you grow enough herbs that when friends come to dinner they comment on your farm-to-table cooking.

English poet Alfred Austin said it best: “Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.”