Our Healing Gardens
Despite myself, I began to feel peace. I could breathe deeply again. The mid-afternoon colors were soft and muted, as if to say, ‘Now is not our time, but we are here for you.’ Bird song was drifting down from the treetops, and a new hatching of brown moths flitted erratically around us, careening into things, seemingly without any control over the direction of their short lives.
~ Anonymous
There are long, serene vistas here. (Gardens teach us patience.) There is water. (Gardens allow for reflection). And all along the way, there are places to sit, “to come to a full halt,” explains Jill. “It is an immersive experience where you can lose your bearings, and not mind.”
Call it “faith,” if you will, but it is in these spaces that nature shows us there is a meaning to and purpose for everything. The little brown moths? Scientists tell us that such lepidopterans detect currents of scent in the air and veer toward them, constantly readjusting their course. Their ultimate destination is a flower, for its nectar; their ultimate purpose for nature, pollination. In that certainty, there is solace.
Life can be messy, unpredictable, and unfair, our plant scapes say. Flowers blossom when the sun is shining, and tilt (and sometimes fall) when the storms come. But life will go on, in one way or another. When we partner up with nature in our gardens, she enables us to persevere through it all--not just doggedly but with beauty and art and music.