Copyright (c) 1992 by Marilyn Barrett, PhD
COME INTO THE garden with me. Don't worry about not knowing the
way: Your heart remembers, even if your head has forgotten. When you
were small and first had time to create your dreams, you were at one
with the earth you played in and with each leaf, bird and cloud you saw.
This is the garden to which I invite you to return.
Imagine a place to which you can bring stress, sorrow, loneliness, and
confusion and from which you can leave with a sense of resolution,
understanding, and calm. Imagine a place where you can express your
own unique nature, create beauty, grow pure food , and gain control over
your life. In my life, the garden has been such a place.
As I learned of the garden's power to heal and renew, I not only moved
through and resolved a serious health crisis but also brought harmony
and balance into my life. I let go of many "shoulds" and "oughts" and
began to live a life closer to my true inner needs and to the natural world
of which I am a part.
My purpose in writing this book is to share what I have learned.
Gardening is a healing art, both physically and spiritually, and once you
learn its principles, you, too, will be able to develop and maintain a way
of life that is in harmony with your own inner nature and with Nature
around you.
Is much of your life determined by others' needs? Are you just getting
by? Do you have a nagging feeling that something is wrong, that from
the time you were little you have been swept along, marching to
someone else's beat, never having the time or the tools to figure out
what is really right for you?
Or are you feeling burned out and tired of the rat race--as though you
have been running on a tread mill, achieving the illusion of progress and
happiness but not really feeling good deep within you?
That's the way it was for me. It was only in retrospect, after things
began to come apart and I became ill, that I saw how out of balance my
life was with my own true nature.
The crisis of my illness and my desire to get well enabled me to see that
my real wants and needs, my true, essential spirit, my very self had
been covered over by layers and layers of stress, disappointment, and
compromise. I no longer remembered what it was that I wanted and
needed to be happy. I decide to try and rediscover it.
I left my job in a smoggy, semidesert town and moved to Los Angeles,
where I bought a house two miles from the ocean. The house had a
large, denuded backyard littered with broken glass, dead weeds, and
rubble. Except for one or two shrubs and a small clump of birches, the
space, which was about half the size of an average city house lot, was
barren. Yet the soil was heavy clay, and I could see that with some
attention it could become good garden loam.
Guided by my visions that I'd had in my mind since childhood, I decided
to create my own garden space. I hauled away the trash, uprooted dead
plants, cleared weeds, and enriched the soil. The garden evolved as I
went along. Generous neighbors donated calla lilies, iris, impatiens, and
Mexican evening primrose. As houses in the neighborhood were
demolished to make way for condominiums, I rescued from the
bulldozers violets, tiger lilies, geraniums, roses and fuchsias. Bricks for
walkways I retrieved from the same sites. Each day I spent time in the
garden digging, planting, and weeding, adding cosmos, lobelia,
calendula, and forget-me-nots to the beds and borders I created.
As I dug and planted, I began to get in touch with the strength in my
body and to feel the benefits of being out of doors. My energy began to
return, and my depression lifted.
Working in the garden that first year, clearing and planting, I discovered
that I was also working out the answers to many questions and
problems. As my garden began to take tentative shape, my psyche, too
began to form an image of where I was in my life. As drooping irises,
calla lilies, and sword ferns survived the shock of transplanting and as
earthworms multiplied in the soil that I dug and fertilized, I gained
comfort and release from some of the fear and uncertainty I felt. Then,
later, as these plants took root and sent out new green shoots, as I dug
borders and laid out pathways, some impending shape of my own future
began to emerge within me. In spring, when the tall callas unfurled their
creamy blooms and the jowled and ruffled heads of blue and yellow
irises opened from tightly sheathed buds, as flowers and leaves stirred
and rustled in the gentle, sun-warmed breeze and as lemon blossoms
from the small tree I'd planted in autumn scented the air, I saw that I,
too, had completed a cycle of growth.
Through this connectedness with the rhythms of Nature, I gained
balance and perspective and was able to see just how distanced from
my needs I had become.
So it is for many of us. So it is with the planet. The stresses we face
force us to violate and become alienated from our own basic human
needs. Daily we hear of global warming, the greenhouse effect, and the
destruction of the ozone layer. We have be come unable to regulate our
outer environment as well as our inner environment.
This book will show you how to restore and maintain a healthful
connection with Nature and with yourself. It will help you reduce stress,
feel more content, and come to know your personal boundaries and
limits of tolerance.
You will learn to use the actual garden, in your back or front yard, on
your balcony or windowsill. And you will also learn how to create and
use a mental garden, one you can carry with you and that will help you
to restore and retain your balance as you move through your daily life.
Why the garden? It is immediate and tangible--it's not an idea, or a
theory, or an abstraction. It is a microcosm of Nature's processes, a
little world you can make on your own human scale. In the garden, you
can learn to flow with the rhythms of Nature; you can attune yourself to
Nature's harmony.
The garden is a place where you can, literally and figuratively, come to
your senses and find delight in them. The seasons are dependable
guides from which we can learn to lead a wise and thoughtful life.
NEXT CHAPTERS of Creating Eden
- Mind Gardens
- Clearing
- Digging
- Planting
- Growing
- Tending
- Conserving
- Reflecting on Catastrophe and Loss
- Harvesting
- Gleanings
- gardens
Readers' comments about
Creating_Eden:_The_Garden_as_a_Healing_Space, Copyright (c) 1992
by Marilyn Barrett, PhD
