July/August 2011 Living Now
Conscious Gardening
by Michael J. Roads
There are many gardeners in the world, but few are outstanding. What is it that makes one particular gardener stand out from so many others? It’s the relationship that gardener has with the garden.
Loving the garden, loving the land, loving the plants — really loving nature —creates a conscious relationship where the garden is your meeting place with nature. But something extra is required. Nature lives in the eternal moment. Plants are not thinking about us and their place in the world — they are simply growing and living in the moment.
Unfortunately, we can think our way out of the moment, but we can’t think our way into it. While all natural life is consciously in the moment, humanity is so busy thinking that we live subconsciously, rarely conscious of being in the moment. We live subconsciously, nature lives consciously.
You can’t subconsciously love nature. In fact, you can’t subconsciously love. Love requires full consciousness. You can’t be a subconscious gardener, and love the garden. As a gardener, you may quarrel with your spouse, but never with the garden. For this type of gardener, the garden is a retreat, a refuge, a shelter from the stormy blasts.
When I was a young teenager in England, I met a lady in her 90s. She showed me her garden. It was one small garden in the middle of a row of terraced houses, each garden divided from the others by a very high brick wall. The sunlight struggled to find her garden, but for most of the year it was filled with an abundance of flowering plants. I was a keen gardener, and I knew there was not enough sun to get those plants into flower. But as I watched her, feeling the love she felt for her garden, I realized that she was the sun in her garden. I learned that when you love the garden and its plants, as she did, you can throw the rule book away. She was the first outstanding gardener I ever met. I never forgot her — or what she taught me.
One of the great lessons I have consciously learned from nature in a garden is about being-with while doing-to. We get so busy, doing, doing, doing — all while thinking about our day. Doing-to, but not being-with. If you are pulling weeds, be aware of what you are doing — being-with, you gradually become conscious of a greater connection with nature.
Conscious gardening means that you are learning to be conscious in life, and your teacher is nature. The garden is the meeting place, you are the student. Nature offers you the most wondrous relationship possible, taking you beyond the mundane and into the magnificent.
Some people talk of the spirit of nature — this is found as a higher energy in the gardens of the true garden lovers. These are the “green thumb” people. Their gardens may be huge and beautiful, or a sprawl of seemingly untidy plants, but energy-wise they have the X-factor. Equally, a garden may be tiny, but the relationship with the garden can be huge.
When you can follow the intuitive feelings you have as a gardener, placing plants in the ground where they want to grow, you will be able to develop that precious nature/human relationship to its full potential. This is when you become aware of the clear parallels between life and the garden.
Pruning old, sprawling, thorny growth from the roses equates as removing the tangle of prickly attitudes we have developed, hindering our growth. If we are conscious while we clear away unwanted weeds from the garden, allowing our plants the room to grow, we can also release the weeds of our old thinking habits, giving space for the expansion and growth of our own potential.
Michael J. Roads is the author of Conscious Gardening
. Visit www.michaelroads.com.