Theme: Getting Started
Intro: I Believe – Now What?
Exercise: Your Desires For Your Garden
Nature Spirits: Communicating Your Desires
Plants: Tell Me About Plants
Thriving Garden: What Does “Thriving” Mean To You?
Energy In The Garden: Name That Feeling
Around The Garden: Money
People In The Garden: Who Else Lives In Your Garden?
What’s Next
Intro: I Believe – Now What?
Understanding it’s time for a new paradigm around our relationship with Nature is a huge step forward. Beginning to grasp what that new paradigm might look like, and imagining working With Nature instead of trying to control everything feels really good. Now what?
What’s your first move? In every interaction with Nature and your garden, you’ll want to enter a state we refer to around here as “fit spiritual condition.” Take a moment – or two – to breathe deeply. You don’t have to be in the garden – you can do a lot of work with Nature from your favorite chair or at your desk.
The idea is to be in that state that will facilitate your connection with Nature. Whether it’s meditation or visualization, looking at a coffee-table garden book or a seed catalog, or listening to the waltz of the sugar plum faeries, just go there.
Then ask to be connected with Nature. Know that it is so. Nature is there always, waiting to be invited, wanting to help you.
Exercise: Your Desires for Your Garden
Since we’re co-creating with Nature, you get a say in what goes on in your garden right along with Nature. Your first part is to state your intention. You can start by answering these questions:
1. What’s important to you about your garden?
2. What do you like your garden to do for you?
3. How would you like your garden to look? Feel?
4. Where have you been that’s like the way you want your garden to be?
5. What activities do you anticipate in your garden?
6. What special concerns do you have?
Start by brainstorming – make a list. Don’t hold back. Get it all out on paper.
Then refine your list. The idea is to get a clear answer to question number one: what’s important to you about your garden?
Boil your answer down to about one paragraph. You’re about to try to explain your ideas to Nature, so you need to be brief, to the point, and very clear. Remember, you may get exactly what you ask for!
To say anything more here would be to limit your creativity and your expression of what’s true for you about your desires, your garden, and your relationship with Nature. You’ll know you’ve got it down to the paragraph when you want to hug the page and run outside to tell your new partner!
Nature Spirits: Communicating Your Desires
Now, I don’t want to let you down here, but Nature already heard you! That’s right, you’re not working with just any partner. Your heart is singing the news of your creation and Nature gets it. Remember, you are a part of Nature, so this is you talking to You.
Still, you want to present your paragraph to Nature because that’s the way partners do things. Remember: open and honest communication.
Also, even though Nature clearly hears you, you may not yet be clearly hearing Nature. So this is a great way to begin the conversation.
You begin by getting centered in the garden and asking to be connected with Nature. Then you say it like you mean it: this is what I would like my garden to be and my intention is to partner with you in bringing it to full flower.
That’s it.
Plants: Tell Me About Plants
Plants are some of the loveliest creatures on earth. I marvel at Spirit expressing as plants.
There are lots of living things in your garden. For me, providing a home in which plants thrive is the core of gardening. Everybody else is just there to support the plants – or to enjoy them – or both.
It’s a kind of love affair that’s encoded deep inside us. I’m running out of words, so I better stop before I break into a poem or a song.
How about if you talk for awhile? What do plants mean to you? When you focus on a single plant, what is the conversation going on in your head? What is your heart saying?
I think it’s time to start talking with your plants. You don’t have to speak aloud if you don’t want to – plants are far better at understanding human thoughts than you might imagine. Try just saying to yourself what you’re thinking and feeling about the plant you’re tuned in with.
Pretty soon, something will shift in you. Notice what that shift is about. Now, when you’re in your garden, you’ll know you are never alone.
Thriving Garden: What Does “Thriving” Mean to You?
I got tired of people pointing at a plant and explaining to me that “It’s still alive!” So what? Since when is keeping plants alive any sort of goal? Can we do better? Please?
How do you feel when you are thriving? Have you had a day like that? Recently? I hope so!
When I think of “thrive,” I think vibrant health and well-being, a state of exuberant growth and expression, a pushing outward against all limits.
When I’m observing a plant that’s thriving, I’m seeing a shade of green that radiates energy, flowers causing stems to droop, branches which can barely hang on to an abundant fruit crop, new growth pushing out everywhere. You can almost hear thriving plants singing with joy!
That’s what we’re shooting for in the garden. That’s when we know we’re working in total harmony with Nature.
I don’t really want to contrast “thrive” with “survive.” It lowers my energy just thinking about it. If our goal is joy, we can’t afford much lowering of energy – our energy or the energy of our plants!
Energy in The Garden: Name That Feeling
Each plant has a unique energy – a kind of signature all its own. Not surprisingly, the character of a particular plant’s energy signature shows up in our emotions when we’re in touch with it.
Let me say that a different way. If you connect with a particular plant, you will feel its energy in your body. That energy will lead you to feel a certain way.
This feeling is important for many reasons. How a plant is used by humans has much to do with the feelings it brings up in people.
It’s no accident that a yellow rose signals friendship, or that a red one is given to express love. There’s no surprise in chamomile showing up in a bedtime tea, or finding mint enlivening a julip. You don’t have to think too hard about a willow being weeping, or a prickly pear cactus being prickly.
The idea of this little exercise is to see if you can name the feeling you get from the individual plants in your garden, your home, or your neighborhood park.
Get in touch with each plant through your senses. Then see if you can connect even deeper. Try to feel what that plant is. Feel its energy. Notice what’s showing up in your body. Be with that a moment and experience it fully. And then name that feeling.
It may take some practice, but it’s well worth the effort. You’ll be developing your relationship with Nature. That way, when you ask for guidance about a certain plant – what you can do for it or what it can do for you – at least you’ll know who you’re talking with!
Around The Garden: Money
Before you drift off into that beautiful flower you’re entranced by, let’s talk a moment about the other green stuff – cash.
There’s something very simple you need to know about the role of money in co-creating your garden with Nature. I don’t know what it is, so if you figure it out, please write me!
Actually, Nature is a lot more powerful than money. With Nature as your partner, you can create a fantastic garden without any money at all. That’s probably not how you’ll do it, but it’s good to know that it has been done.
What I will say about money is this: think twice before turning to money as the solution to any need in your garden. You’ll be very glad you did.
What shows up when you rely on Nature instead of money can be astonishing. What shows up when you rely on yourself instead of money can be empowering. When you and Nature work together, you’re amazing!
People in The Garden: Who Else Lives In Your Garden?
OK, there’s you. There’s your family. Your friends and neighbors come over. You have parties in your garden, sometimes with people you hardly know. Maybe a delivery person or contractor comes in. Anybody else?
Well, your plants live there. Birds live there. Bugs live there. A lot of things too tiny to see live there. A dog or cat may live there. Woodland and neighborhood wildlife pass through. They may even hold their own party in your garden! We used to host a coyote who loved to dine while laying out on our little patch of grass, enjoying a few sips from the kids wading pool to wash it down.
Nature lives there. Spirits of many sorts live there. God lives there.
Who else lives in your Garden?
Well, since they live there, aren’t they part of your garden too?
If they are, then they have a reason for being there. They have a role. They serve a purpose.
Since you’re the host, the caretaker, the steward of the garden, you’ll want to make sure everyone is cared for. That their needs are met. That they live harmoniously together.
That their energy enhances the overall garden.
That’s a little different way of thinking about some of these residents and visitors. Better take some time to get used to this new thinking. We don’t allow fighting in the garden – it wrecks the joy there.
What’s Next
In Lesson Three, we’ll work on laying out your garden. You may not be starting from scratch, but you’ll want to be able to co-create your garden with Nature. Some of this will echo established landscape and garden design practice; some will open new areas of possibility and new ways of seeing your garden.
Until then, please say hello to your plants for me!
Peace,
Rog
