Songfacts®:

• This song about a slacker who has a severe allergic reaction while cleaning up her yard was penned by Barnett on the beach. She told NME: "As a song I was really proud of it. But I thought everyone would hate it! Just because, aw, it's a really stupid song. It's so long and has no chorus and it's not catchy, you know?"
• The lyrics of this half-spoken song describe an event that actually happened. Barnett was feeling ambitious one day and decided to do some gardening. It went horribly wrong when she started having trouble breathing. An ambulance was called and she ended up in the hospital. She explained to Uncut magazine: "'Avant Gardener' is all true, apart from the adrenaline into the heart, like in Pulp Fiction. I just got adrenaline in the top of the thigh... But in the heart sounded so much more exciting."
• Although this song recounts a real experience, Barnett does it with a sardonic wink, as it expresses that feeling you get when you finally find ambition and it fails miserably, making you wonder if you're better off staying in your comfort zone.
• The music video quickly got over a million views on YouTube and led to an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. The video is a non sequitur, with Barnett playing an awkward match of tennis with her band.
• One of the most memorable lines in "Avant Gardener" sums up a distinctly twentysomething crisis: wondering whether your chosen talents are, in the grand scheme of things, of any practical use.
  
  The paramedic thinks I'm clever because I play guitar.
  I think she's clever because she stops people dying
  I'm not too good at breathing in
  
  It's difficult to argue with the résumé of someone whose job description includes keeping strangers alive. "I feel like I'm coming to a place now at, like, 38, that I am more comfortable that with that," Barnett told Mojo magazine in 2026. "I don't beat myself up about it. I remember sitting at a friend's birthday dinner, talking to someone I didn't know. She was a doctor and I was really impressed by what she did. She was like, 'It's nothing. But what you do? I wish I could do what you do.' Everybody has the capability to change someone else's life or change someone else's day."