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Marilyn Barrett_Creating_Eden

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C R E A T I N G  E D E N: The Garden as a Healing Space
Copyright (c) 1992 by Marilyn Barrett, PhD 
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Extract: I N T R O D U C T I O N

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 become 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. 

N E X T  C H A P T E R S
Mind Gardens
Clearing
Digging
Planting
Growing
Tending
Conserving
Reflecting on Catastrophe and Loss
Harvesting
Gleanings

_Creating_Eden_ Copyright (c) 1992 by Marilyn Barrett, PhD Publisher:
Harper San Francisco, A Division of Harper Collins Publishers.  
ISBN 0-06-250076-7