“Gardening is such an instant cure for nature-deficit disorder. When you’re caring for a plant, you are constantly attuned to their life force, their well-being.” — Sunny Lindley, Ashland-based gardener, eco- artist, and coach

When Sunny Lindley was a young wife and mother, living in Grants Pass where she was born and raised, the unthinkable happened — her husband died unexpectedly, and she found herself raising their three small sons on her own. However, Sunny resolved to turn her grief toward a path of healing by rebuilding her life to reflect what she valued the most — making her young kids her top priority and living an environmentally sustainable life in relationship with nature.

She built a 30-foot yurt, raised chickens and grew vegetables, forging a deliberate, self-determined lifestyle that challenged typical cultural narratives. “I became a naturalist, a mountain woman, a Renaissance parent, a maker, and a homesteader,” Sunny said.

The garden became an “incredibly healing” aspect of her family’s life. Sunny told me, “Gardeners have a reciprocal relationship with their plants and a relationship with life itself. They are giving to that life, and that life gives back to them.”

Rather than trying to pour knowledge into her children, Sunny used the garden to provide learning experiences where they could connect to nature, an antidote to nature-deficit disorder. The term was coined by Richard Louv in his book “Last Child in the Woods” (2005), where he argues that today’s children spend less time outdoors, leading to adverse effects on mental, emotional, and physical health.

Now that her sons are grown (21, 25 and 29 years old), Sunny credits their time in the garden with helping them become more “response-able” adults. “I feel very proud of my kids — they’re kind, curious, they know how to prioritize, and they are life-long learners,” Sunny said.

Sunny’s personal experiences showed her how gardening and interacting with nature can facilitate post-traumatic healing and growth. She decided she wanted to learn more, so in 2005 she moved with her sons to Ashland, enrolled at SOU, and earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology with a minor in gender studies. She participated in workshops that focused on counseling strategies for trauma recovery and building healthy relationships.

She also studied the connection between the body’s central nervous system and physical/mental wellbeing. When the CNS is compromised, it can lead to anxiety disorders, depression, and other mental health conditions; however, activities such as gardening, meditation and yoga can help reduce stress by balancing the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.

“Having a regulated central nervous system helps us sustain our attention, but that’s hard to do in our fast-paced lives,” Sunny said. “Being outdoors in a garden helps because you have to observe closely.”

Another major life change occurred when Sunny decided it was time to sell her screen-printing business, which was developing a bigger carbon footprint as she was increasingly forced to rely on outsourcing to keep up with client demands. That didn’t square with her values, so she looked for another artistic and entrepreneurial outlet that would be more environmentally friendly.

That’s when Sunny started a dye-plant garden and began experimenting with making natural dyes and botanical prints.

She grows a variety of flowers: indigo (Indigofera tinctoria), Japanese indigo (Persicaria tinctoria), madder root (Rubio tinctorum), sulfur cosmos (Cosmos sulphureus), dyer’s chamomile (Anthemis tinctoria), dyer’s coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria) and black hollyhock (Alcea rosea) that not only produce a rainbow of natural pigments, but also add color to her garden and attract pollinators and beneficial insects. (Notice how many of the plant species names include the Latin root “tinct” for “dyeing” that reflects their traditional use).

After harvesting the plants from the garden, drying the flowers, leaves, or roots on a screen, and processing the pigments in a dye bath, Sunny creates wearable art and botanical dye prints that she sells at the Lithia Artisans Market in Ashland. She told me she particularly enjoys working with indigo, an easy-to-grow annual plant that has been used by indigenous cultures for millennia to produce deep-blue dyes.

It takes 6-10 indigo plants to produce enough dye for a small t-shirt, and it’s a long-term process to go from growing the plants to creating artwork with their pigments; however, Sunny told me that’s exactly the point. “Going through the whole process is unbelievably therapeutic. It pulls you into a sense of belonging in nature, and it helps restore balance to the central nervous system,” she said.

Not to mention that at the end of it, dye-plant gardeners could have a beautiful piece of art produced from the plants they grew, as well as seeds saved from the plants to continue the process anew. Sunny believes dye-plant gardening is an ideal way to extricate ourselves from society’s hyper-focus on consumerism.

Sunny shares her gardening expertise through garden coaching, and she shares her artistic knowledge and skills through eco-workshops at her home studio in Ashland. An upcoming workshop from 3-5 p.m. on June 7 focuses on creating botanical prints on paper, using dye plants from her garden. For more information or to register, visit Sunny’s website at www.sunnyjlindley.com.