Even Olympic dreams start with a seed. At the unusually late age of 27, I was offered the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to leave my corporate job and join Rowing Canada’s Talent Identification program. Given my late age and non-existent experience with organized sport, this seemed like a crazy (and fiscally irresponsible) idea. I called my parents, expecting them to talk some sense into me. Instead, they told me to go for it. “You never want to wonder what if,” my father said. “Go and see how fast you can be.” My mother, ever the practical woman of action, grabbed her shovel and immediately started expanding the vegetable plot. Over the next decade, West Coast Seeds-planted produce would fuel my 4000-calories a day journey to the Tokyo Olympics.

Growing up playing in the dirt of my parent’s Langley acreage, I learned the value of healthy food and homegrown meals. Food was the cornerstone of our family. I watched my mother can, dehydrate, juice, freeze, jam, bake, and cook our produce in every way imaginable. She approached gardening as an experiment, trying new seed types and planting methods, and always finding new ways of using the produce. Her flower beds were filled with gifts of remembrance from fellow gardening friends. 

As an athlete, inspired by my mother’s example, I grew a small but mighty potted garden outside my tiny basement suite. That said, I was a poor caretaker — abandoning my plants to fend for themselves while I competed overseas for weeks or months at a time. I came to view gardening as more than just a means of nutrition but as a form of cognitive therapy. In 2015, when I was biking home from training, a vehicle blew through the cycling crosswalk and hit me, throwing my body one way and my bike another. During my recovery, I faced invisible injuries and innumerable concussion symptoms. I lost control of my emotions, experienced vertigo and light sensitivity, and felt like my brain was made of Swiss cheese. I knew how to heal a broken bone — but how do you heal a mind? Turns out, gardening! The therapeutic and methodical process of weeding and watering was the “brain break” I desperately needed, and in a little over a year, I went from working with an occupational therapist to National Champion.

Like many of us, my love of gardening deepened through COVID. A historic Olympic postponement meant that for 138 days I trained from a garage as my team and I tackled the monumental goal of building a world-class rowing team from dry land and over Zoom. As I wasn’t able to raid my family’s garden, my parents would send car-loads of fresh produce to Victoria, which my fiance would leave outside my door, waving encouragement to me through the safety of the window before heading back to Vancouver. When safety precautions meant we couldn’t see each other in person, home-grown produce was a way of staying connected.

Eight years after that first seed of an idea was planted, I had blossomed into a two-time World Cup medallist and Olympian. At the Tokyo 2020 Games, our uniquely female-coached team proudly brought home Canada’s first gold medal in Women’s Coxed Eight Rowing in a quarter century. I hung up my oars and purchased a home on Vancouver Island, setting my sights on my next podium — creating a produce-rich garden with an emphasis on sustainability. Before we had even considered buying furniture, I was already in the front yard moving plants, digging sod, and replacing impractical tropical palms for locally grown flowers and herbs that could attract pollinators.

I consider myself a novice gardener, an intermediate harvester, and an advanced dreamer. I have Olympic-sized ambitions in the garden but understand that the medal doesn’t come overnight. There have been many failures along the way. For weeks I lovingly watered and tended to unknown plants sprouting in my new garden, wondering what wondrous flower was growing — until a friend kindly informed me that it was, in fact, a highly invasive weed. My family also learned the hard way that zucchini plants + compost = “zucchini-gate.” That summer was a non-stop game of hide and seek as we tried to harvest the squash before they grew into the sizes of small cats. Overrun, we forced them upon our neighbours, even sneaking them into the luggage and vehicles of visiting friends.

But there have also been gold-medal moments. I’m proud to have created a haven for local wildlife. Alongside investing in local, pollinator-friendly plants, I’ve used our 3D printer to make homes for mason and leaf-cutter bees and hummingbird feeder heaters for our overwintering Anna’s hummingbirds. I intermingle Jonny jump-ups and marigolds among my vegetables, practice “guerilla gardening” by intercropping produce in my flower garden, and leave the plants untrimmed to provide winter home for insects and a food source for birds. I’m currently reviving a neglected pond and water feature in our backyard to create a habitat for frogs and insects. And make no mistake, I have also killed many, many, many plants. But I’ve come to realize that there’s little difference between rowing and growing — have a plan, enjoy the process, and let failures nourish your success.