What Is Analogue Gardening? (And Why I Think It's the Future of Self-Care)

By Rachael | Rising Iris Farm

A few summers ago, my ten-month-old daughter taught me something I didn't expect to learn from someone who can't yet say the word "berry."

We were out by the bushes, blackberries and blueberries, and she was picking them on her own. Not because I showed her how. Not because it was some curated, aesthetic farm moment. She just... figured it out. Over the course of a few weeks, through nothing but trial and error, she learned which berries would be sweet and which would pucker her little face. I'd watch her reach for one, pause, and choose a different one. She was negotiating with the bush. She was ten months old.

Here's the part that got me: I didn't know what a berry bush looked like until I started gardening as an adult, over ten years ago. And there was my daughter, already building her own quiet relationship with these plants. No lesson, no instruction, just her hands and her curiosity and the sun on her face. It wasn't deep or poetic or complicated. It was just really simple and sweet. And it broke something open in me about what I was actually building on this farm.

It started as gardening. It became something else.

I've been growing things for a long time now, and somewhere along the way, the garden stopped being just the garden. It became the starting point for everything else. The skincare I formulate from plants I've grown from seed, the indigo I harvest for dyeing workshops, the flowers my community arranges and presses and takes home to people they love.

I started calling this analogue gardening, and I want to tell you what I mean by that.

Gardening, to me, is something quiet and contained. And I love that part. It's restorative and deeply relaxing. But analogue gardening is what happens after the garden. It's what stems from the soil but really lives in your home, in your kitchen, in community, with your family and your kids. It's growing things that you can then use to create and connect. One of a kind materials to indulge your curiosities and keep you tethered to the physical world around you and the people you love.

It doesn't have to be a big production. It's not about homesteading perfection or Instagram-worthy harvests. When I first started gardening, we would harvest one strawberry, just one, and split it between all six of us. Because it was the first strawberry, and it was so special that everyone needed to be part of it. Trying to take one-sixth of a tiny strawberry so the rest of your family can experience that moment? That's analogue gardening to me just as much as anything else. It's the quiet satisfaction of a plant you watched grow becoming part of something joyful. A dyed scarf, a meal with your kids, a shared sliver of fruit so small it barely counts as a bite. A moment that wouldn't have existed without the garden, but that isn't really about the garden at all.

The closest thing to magic I know

I teach an indigo alchemy workshop on my farm. We grow Persicaria tinctoria, Japanese indigo, and we use it to dye silk scarves together. The process is disarmingly simple: you pick a few handfuls of leaves, place them in a bowl with the silk, sprinkle with salt, and massage it all together like a kale salad.

For the first few minutes, nothing much happens. You're kneading green leaves into white silk and wondering if this is actually going to work. It takes longer than you'd expect. And then, slowly, you start to see a little green, a hint of blue. Ten more minutes and everyone has deep blue hands and deep blue silk scarves and the room has gone from meditative and maybe even a little doubtful to pure, wide-open joy. Smiles all around. Without fail.

It's the closest thing to magic I've ever felt. Not just the color, although watching indigo reveal itself never gets old, but the collective joy it brings to everyone simultaneously. No one escapes it. That feeling is exactly why I built this farm.

Who this is for (which is everyone, honestly)

I want to be clear about something: I'm not here to teach you how to live closer to the land. My ten-month-old figured out berry bushes faster than I did. What I'm building is a place where we figure it out together.

When I sit on the farm with a group of curious women who showed up for a workshop, and we're there for the sole purpose of being creative, that feels like a trip to the spa for my soul. It's a deep exhale. And every single time, we all remark on how special it feels. We leave feeling connected without knowing much about each other beyond the fact that we shared a beautiful afternoon making something together. Nobody needed credentials to be there. Nobody needed a garden of their own or a certain kind of life. They just showed up with their hands and their curiosity, and that was enough.

What I'm building

Everything I do at Rising Iris, the skincare, the workshops, the growing, it all comes back to the same thing: sharing what the garden gives me. And I want a place to do more of that.

I'm building a publication called The Analogue Garden. It's where I'll be writing about all of this. The plants, the making, the workshops, the messy and beautiful reality of growing things with purpose. Seasonal projects you can try. The science and soul behind botanicals. Stories from the farm and from the people who gather here. A friend once told me that her garden will teach her everything she needs if she's open to listening, and I really believe that too. So I'll be sharing what the plants and the growing teach me, like how you can pour everything you have into a tomato bush only to find out the mouse got there first. And honestly? Maybe I grew that tomato for both of us and just didn't know it yet. That's not some grand philosophical stance. It's just that imagining a tiny mouse diving into a juicy tomato brings me just as much joy as eating it myself. Maybe even more.

If you're someone who already gardens and wants to think about what comes after the harvest, or if you've never grown a thing in your life but something here made you want to, I'd love for you to come along. The garden doesn't check your resume. You just need to be a little bit curious.

More to come. For now, I'll be out by the berry bushes.

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