Touch the Divine in a Garden

garden by Jan Johnsen

The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.

~ George Bernard Shaw

Being in a garden elevates us and inspires many of us...

That is the why I write this blog.  I want to share my lifelong landscape work and experience with others so that you, too, will ‘touch the earth’.

And I want to promote a reverent way of looking at the green world which sees the piece of ground outside our door as an ‘everyday conduit’ to the energy of life that flows within plants, water, trees, sunlight, rocks, birds and assorted creatures.

a place, as George Bernard Shaw declared, where we can touch the divine.

Looking at the natural world in this way is nothing new. The idea of sanctified outdoor space was the genesis for the sacred groves of the Egyptians, Indians and Greeks. 

It birthed the medieval labyrinths and Native Americans’ 'medicine wheels'. 

And of course, ancient Chinese geomancy, ‘Feng Shui’, and Indian ‘Vaastu’, which see the earth and her directions as vibrant forces.

We have, up until recently, largely forgotten these traditions but, now, as our enthusiasm for plants, spirituality and the unseen has increased, we see there is something more to Nature than what we have been taught.

cascade and garden by Jan Johnsen

So we look back to great thinkers such as Lao-Tzu, Pythagoras and Emerson and ancient peoples such as the Native Americans, Chinese and Hawaiians for their sage guidance. 

They, above all, can remind us of the power of the natural world upon the human spirit. 

I believe that now, at the dawn of the 21st century, we can learn a lot from these 'rediscoveries'.

My firm belief is that a garden space is one place to find the enchantment that we are all seeking....