Sometimes growth in the garden means going small

In a culture that equates success with expansion, learning to contract intentionally may be one of the most radical acts we can perform. I am best known for urging people to grow more of their own food, yet at this stage in my life, I am discovering the wisdom in growing less — and with it, lessons about what each season of life requires.

When my wife, Jacqueline, and I moved into our home in coastal Maine in 2005, we were thrilled to have a third of an acre to call our own. We had spent years living with our three young sons in a cramped Brussels apartment, where our downstairs neighbor would tap his ceiling with a broom whenever the boys ran through the living room. For years, we had longed for a small piece of earth to care for — this yard was our chance.

We started modestly that first summer, with our oldest son, François, and his friend helping me strip sod to create our first vegetable bed. By the end of that season, it measured around 800 square feet. The following year, we doubled it. As our family settled in, the garden became the heart of our home and my work — I had founded a nonprofit promoting food gardening, and our backyard served as a test plot, a photo shoot location and an open-air classroom. We grew everything we could think of, even crops uncommon in Maine such as artichokes, Belgian endives and melons. Some failed, some flourished. That was part of the fun.

We didn’t stop at the backyard. We transformed our front yard into a showcase for edible landscaping, complete with a sign to educate passersby. During the Great Recession of 2009, Jacqueline and I weighed every crop we harvested, calculating that our garden had produced 833 pounds of organic food worth more than $2,000. That figure felt like both vindication and security. We preserved everything we could, freezing and canning, eventually converting our bulkhead into a root cellar. Our sons ran a farmstand from our driveway, selling salad greens instead of lemonade. The garden gave us not just food, but also purpose and agency in an unpredictable world.

But over time, what once felt empowering began to feel burdensome. When our middle son, Maxim, left for college in 2015, and then Sebastian in 2018, we had fewer mouths to feed and fewer hands to help. We kept the large garden going — partly out of habit, partly because it had come to define us. How do you let go of something that has shaped who you are? It's a question many face at moments of transition: retirement, an empty nest, a career pivot.

The pandemic briefly made the big garden valuable again when Maxim and Sebastian returned home. But by 2021, as life resumed its normal rhythms, Jacqueline and I looked at our sprawling beds with new eyes. We didn't need to grow as much. We didn't want to grow as much.

So we began scaling back. That year, we redrew the garden's footprint, eliminating our front yard beds and reducing the backyard garden to 800 square feet. It was emotional — the garden had grown with our family, and now it was starting to shrink. But it wasn't defeat. It was clarity. We were learning the difference between what we needed and what we thought we should want.

Around the same time, we found ourselves part of the “sandwich generation” — helping our son François navigate new parenthood while caring for my aging parents as their health declined. Our lives were shifting again, stretched between generations. And in that, I began to see a broader truth.

We live in a culture that equates progress with growth — more consumption, more output, more striving. But what happens when more becomes unsustainable? Not just for the planet, but for us?

Last fall, we downsized the garden again — this time to just 400 square feet, one-fifth of its peak size. The smaller plot yields more of what we value now: calm, satisfaction and space for reflection. I no longer try to grow everything — just what brings us joy.

That joy is growing in new ways. This spring, my grandson crouched beside me to plant peas, 20 years after his father helped dig the first bed. His small hands mimicked mine with such focus that I was momentarily transfixed. Gardening is, at heart, an act of faith — trusting something to take root and thrive. I felt that same faith watching him, sensing that what mattered most wasn't my constant pushing, but creating conditions where the next generation could flourish.

For years, I urged others to grow more, give more — often asking the same of myself. But in that moment, I saw that the passion I'd cultivated was continuing through new hands. The work wasn't ending. It was evolving.

This isn’t the end of the garden’s story — it is a new chapter about rightsizing. In an age of climate anxiety, economic precarity and burnout, the instinct to scale back shouldn’t be confused with giving up. Whether it’s a garden, a home or a career, there’s wisdom in knowing when to expand and when to contract — when to go big, and when to go home to something smaller that fits who you are now.

As we face the realities of a warming planet and depleted resources, perhaps the most important question isn’t how to do more — but how to do enough.

I continue to believe in the power of growing food. But I’ve come to see that the most meaningful harvests aren’t always measured in pounds. Sometimes they’re found in a three-year-old’s muddy hands beside yours, in the peace of tending less but tending it well, and in the recognition that abundance doesn’t always mean more.