It's a no-brainer, comparing modern gardens to how we eat. In just a couple or three generations we've gone from eating mostly home-cooked food, and gardening with mostly local resources, to routine fast-food and "mow-and-blow" landscapes filled with plants from afar.

Waistlines have been supersized while garden sizes have withered. Why bother to grow when you can just run to the store and get prepackaged? Instead of sowing saved seed, we buy uniform hybrids by the six-pack, shipped to us at a huge cost. Sure, we've shed a lot of the menial work of putting both food on the table and flowers in the garden, but at what cost to the connections with the Earth that our ancestors took for granted?

Slow Gardening to the rescue! Similar to Slow Food(Tm) , an international movement started in Italy in the 1980s by convivial connoisseurs who savor producing, preparing and consuming traditional in-season dishes, a "slow-gardening" approach can help us enjoy our gardens year in and year out and possibly connect us with our neighbors.

Get together. Gardeners have always been a sharing tribe.

Take it easy. Think "long haul" and take your time. Life has lots of pressures--why include them in the garden?

Grow plants of all descriptions - native or well-adapted - that like your climate and provide something for you and local wildlife through all seasons.

Get 'er done. You don't have to be an expert to garden, or even to work very hard. Cliches can help: No need to go whole hog right off the bat. Don't have to eat the whole enchilada.

IYour garden provides natural opportunities to kick back, relax, step off the treadmill. Find a safe group of like-minded folks who won't impose their expectations onto you or your garden, grab a digging fork and slip right into the rhythm of the seasons.

Slow doesn't necessarily mean lazy.

--Felder Rushing is a 10th-generation American gardener who has written, spoken and photographed widely in the gardening world. Among his numerous credits: host of Gestalt Gardening radio program, author of fifteen gardening books, contributing editor to Horticulture and Garden Design magazines and distinctly non-stuffy national board member of the American Horticultural Society. He has written and photographed for Fine Gardening, Organic Gardening, the National Geographic, Better Homes & Gardens, Landscape Architecture and many others.