Gardening For The Soul

There is much more to a garden then meets the eye. The unseen roots, its deepest source of sustenance, magic or balance is not often visible. All parts of a tree speak. There roots tell about the dark underground life in the soil - like our own soul life - that sustains growth. The trunk hold the heart of the here and now of daily life, connecting the two realms. The crown resides - like birds and the angels up in the sky, like our spirits - transforming light into life. And each season brings us in touch with the cycles and rhythms of life and our own wild, ever connected soul nature.

Spring is the time of regeneration and blossoming. Summer is the time of expansion.  Autumn is the time of fruition and harvest, when we celebrate the fruits of our cultivation.

Our gardens can teach us a lot about patience. Indeed gardens grown without patience all look alike: fast-growing, over fertilized lawns and shrubs, and impatient flowers.

Faith is expressed by the soul gardener who trusts the dormancy, the fallow times.

Awakening - a-sensual garden can awaken our connections to the sacred. The Celtic mystic Father John O'Donahue says that our senses are "the gateway to the soul."

Smell. Tending to our garden is an outward, physical action that unites body, mind, and spirit. It is like breathing. Taking in the air brings us energy, and exhaling releases tensions and promotes letting go and trusting in the next breathes.  When there is a pleasant fragrance in the air our sense of smell is awakened. Scent is our strongest connation to memory and memories are the treasures of life.

Touch. When we prune, plant, weed and harvest we are touching the soil, the plants and the tools. Usually a gentle touch expresses love and care and we feel comforted. Touching plants, especially mature trees, can connect us to nature more intimately and help us develop our relationship and feelings for these beautiful natural beings.

Taste. Our sense of taste can easily be stimulated by the fruits, vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers in the garden. This is an especially direct connection between Nature and our entire body.

Hearing.  In our gardens, our own personal sanctuaries, we can be fulfilled by silence. The silence in a garden is not an empty, hollow, lonely silence – it is a soft silence that gently beckons us to go inward into our own souls. A great stone in the garden can teach a lot about the beauty and grounded ness of silence.  In fact, as in ancient Chinese and Japanese gardens, a well-chosen stone can be a focal point for meditation.

Sight. To truly see the beauty of every nuance of light, color, and texture in our intimate sacred gardens – to gaze deeply and see well is to bring a plant to quality of light – or even a person – deep into our souls. We have the opportunity to develop our vision  - to be visionary – to know the visible and invisible worlds. We can have intimate insights like a macro lens for detail while at the same time hold the distant and the overall views to see the whole picture. In our gardens as well as in our daily life, each perspective of inner and outer detail as well as the wide-angle view is vital and richly fulfilling.

Relationship and Reflection. In the garden we can experience the connectedness and trust in change – and even death – because there is a continuum; there are no final endings. Even when a plant is pulled out it can go into the compost pole to transform into the riches that renew the soul. We can find much comfort and depth of experience in our gardens.  The gardener has a relationship with the garden, and each reflects and nurtures the others. Good drainage is required to allow excesses to flow away even in life itself.

Feng Shi: the Chinese are of placement; feng shui is an ancient ecologically based art, which strives for complete harmony with Nature. It has been used for centuries in China as well as in Bali to improve people’s relationships with the earth’s energies, known as chi. With positive Feng Shui, one’s life can be in balance and all of ones’ relationships with family, career, health, and even prosperity can be enhanced.

Creating positive chi or energy in the garden can be done simply and with intention. The key to Feng Shui is creating a sense of harmony. There are certain elements to consider in the garden in order to create this sense of harmony. It is important to be aware of the light quality and the amount of light in the garden.  Including water element is always beneficial; moving water creates a pleasing sound; a still pond is conductive to reflection. Both produce a calming atmosphere. In Chinese gardens stones with sculptural shapes enhance positive chi in the garden.

Archetypal Elements

Golden Threads for Weaving a Sacred Space. Here are just a few objects or things. There are many more that are in this category.

Bells: Invited to ring by the wind; an awakening reinforcing life dreams, prayers and visions.

Bench: For contemplation; to allow one to sit and be, to experience all the senses of the garden.

Bird Feeder: Represents offering of hospitality to the wild.

Bridge: Connecting one side of belief to another; often over and through water (unconsciousness).

Circle Cycle: Represents wholeness has no beginning and no end. The gold ring is used in the marriage ceremony to symbolize eternal love and balance. The earth, moon, and sun are circles and time – hours, days, and years – is measured by cycles of those circles.  A circle has a center, and it is important in Feng Shui, the Chinese art of placement, to begin in the center – the heart rather than an edge – when creating a sacred space.

Fountain: Abundance of life energy; flow of prosperity.

Hens & Chicks: (Sempervivum tectorum) A rosette-shaped succulent with tiny baby “chick” offspring that cluster around the mother plant.

Herbs: One of the most intriguing diverse, and useful plant groups. Herb gardens usually fall into one of four traditional categories. Culinary – are planted close to the kitchen door and offer leaves, seeds, bulbs and blossoms to flavor food. Physic garden is made up of medicinal herbs to use as remedies for multitude of ailments. The knot garden is a visual treat a carefully designed pattern of intersecting shapes interwoven with different colored herbs. The fourth is Shakespeare garden, which romantically recalls love sonnets and midsummer night’s dreams through its soft textures, colors, and heavenly scents.

Labyrinth: Have been used for thousands of years and are found among many cultures including American Indian, African, Celtic and ancient Greek. Walking the labyrinth as a sacred tool has been brought back into practice through the vision of Dr. Lauren Artress, author of Walking A Sacred Path.

Lantern: Light, guidance. A stone lantern Is an important garden element in Japanese gardens and comes in many shapes and sizes for different uses and symbols with specific meanings.

Manda: a focusing point that centers and opens one’s heart. Our gardens as a whole are centering places and individual flowers can be used for meditation practice. The circle with four parts is also a prayer wheel of the Native Americans and can remind us of the four sacred directions.

Moon Garden: A garden of silver foliage and white flowers, usually night scented, used for ancient moon worship and romance. Lovely for warm evenings and reflects the connections to the tides as well as the feminine cycles.

Offerings: To feed birds is an offering to the wild.

Pond or Pool: Reflecting pools are conductive to meditation, bringing the sky to ground level, integrating heaven and earth.

Prayer flags: Prayer flags are traditionally used in Tibet to enliven the spirit of a place; to make spirits happy; to attract good spirits in order to favor the local people and to watch out for their welfare. The flags blow in the wind to send prayers to heaven.

Rose: symbolizes love, heart opening; gives as messages of affection.

Shapes: There are five universal shapes: The Circle - wholeness, experience of unity. The Equidistant Cross - Relationship and integration. Spiral - growth and change. Triangle - Goals, dreams and visions. Square – Stability and security.

Shrines: focal points for artistic expression of a deity, god, goddess, saint, angel or such. Used to bring their blessings and your live of them to your sacred space.

Staircase: Ascension (rising to the heavens for a higher level and overall view) or decension (toward the earth, rooted ness).

Trees: mature tress, the longest-lived and largest plant form, carry a beauty and life force all of their own. They connect the three worlds: the heavens, the hare and now and the underworld. It is important to protect old trees and develop our personal relationships with them. To touch or embrace a tree is to remember all the life force just under the bark.

Water: An essential element for all of life. Water is sacred in all cultures with its ability to cleanse, purify, nurture, heal and grow plants. It represents fluidity and flexibility.

Wind chime: drawing music from the wind. A universal, harmonic sound played spontaneously by nature, bringing positive chi (energy)

Wreath: began as a leaf and floral circlets for the crown of the head.

Yin & yang: This eastern symbol represents the darkness, which is part of the light and the light, which is the darkness. Like the tree of life, each flows into the other to make up the whole. Yin is the magnetic, receptive feminine, and yang is the dynamic, creative male energy.

Cultivating sacred space: gardening for the soul by Elizabeth Murray or other books on this subject at your local library or book store.