Planting Freedom: Gardening for Sovereignty and Self-Reliance

We often imagine growing food and flowers as peaceful perfection: sun-kissed afternoons, soft soil under our hands, perhaps even a return to Eden. But the garden is sacred ground because it is not perfect. It’s real.

And for anyone craving sovereignty and personal respect in an increasingly controlled world, the garden is not just a sanctuary — it can also become a battlefield.

This isn’t about going off-grid or living in rebellion. It’s about returning to rhythm, to nature and reclaiming our right to grow, tend, and create with our hands in the soil.

Romantic visions of harmony quickly fade when you face your first pest problem or realize the mint you planted is choking everything else. Just like in life, gardens can be full of friction.

Some plants, like strawberries, need space and quiet. Others, like cabbage, release chemicals through their roots that hinder more sensitive neighbors. Mint thrives when given freedom or contained boundaries; meanwhile, its scent repels certain insects.

In the garden, as in human relationships, we must recognize that true companionship can benefit from healthy space; meanwhile, not all supposed companionship is mutually beneficial. And depletion of natural resources — life force — can be prevented with timeless wisdom.

Discernment is key within and outside the borders of a garden. Freedom doesn’t mean chaos. It means the ability to observe, choose, and create a wholesome space — acknowledging the spectrum of “antagonistic” to “companion” plants as a complex reality (in agricultural terms).

In nature, diversity is not a slogan. It is survival. And at times, counterintuitive when it requires division, as irises must be divided to bloom again. Chamomile attracts beneficial insects and boosts cucumber flavor, a good example of herb-vegetable diversity. Cabbage and strawberries don’t share the same soil well, and that’s okay.

Likewise, human community thrives when we honor distinctions, set boundaries, and allow each other space to grow. True unity is not forced sameness; it is functional, respectful coexistence.

The garden truly is a living metaphor for human nature, and by extension, healthy relationships. Nasturtium seeds require filing and soaking before planting—a reminder that some people and ideas take time to open. Tomatoes might pop up unexpectedly, ready before we are.

Just as chamomile protects cucumbers (and cucumbers’ climbing vines shade the chamomile), healthy human relationships offer both shelter and encouragement. Companion planting is relationship wisdom, embodying interdependence, not competition.

Tending a garden teaches us how to listen, to care, and to recognize toxicity before it spreads. Sometimes that means spraying neem oil to repel pests from adolescent vegetables. Sometimes it means pruning. And sometimes it means letting go.

The rose must be cut back in early spring to bloom in summer. Petunias fade if not deadheaded. Pruning, pinching, composting—these acts are not failures. They are freedoms.

Likewise, the solo geranium is not foolish for taking on a beetle infestation to save the rest of the garden, but rather chooses self-sacrifice for the sake of the whole.

There is sacred wisdom in knowing when to release what no longer serves. Compost the old to nourish the new. Let the disintegration of the outdated feed the integration of what’s next.

We keep waiting for top-down solutions: legislation, systems, revolutions. But the garden says, “Start here.”

Grow tomatoes. Share herbs with your neighbor. Teach your children how to pull carrots from the ground. Reclaim your right to grow and nourish, without permission.

The garden isn’t loud. It doesn’t protest. But it is radically sovereign.

Some say burn it all down. Others try to patch up what’s broken. But the garden offers a third way: plant something better.

With the greater whole of humanity embodying flowers of one garden, we don’t need perfect systems. We need fertile ground. Healthy space. People who understand when to diversely companion and when to create distance. We need cultivation, not just critique. We need fruitful patience, not rash decisions that cause harm. And at times, sacred fires.

Let’s be warriors in the garden—tending peace with discernment, rooted in care, alive in freedom.

Cocreating a more beautiful world, Sienna Mae Heath is a gardening consultant, companion gardener, local tea vendor, writer, and artist. She is the host of the, “Food is Freedom” and “Real Unity,”podcasts on Free the People, where she explores agriculture, food as medicine, natural remedies, and human connection. Follow her on Instagram @thesovereigngardener (also on Facebook) and @sovereign_sienna. More at siennamaeheath.com