Barnsley House: Gloucestershire
A garden is a wonderful
way of having the abundance of nature in our everyday
world. A garden artist describes how gardens are sacred places for her:
Gardens, as sacred
places, are often sanctified as much by the process of nurturing
and creating them as they are in the "products" they give us over days, seasons, and
years. Simply stepping into a garden may instantly transport us into another realm.
Gardens invite us to
participate in rituals that tie us to all people of all time. They allow
us to symbolically include loved ones, both living and dead, in our sanctuary through
plants and gift treasures we weave into our garden tapestry. Our garden may tie us
more deeply to our own personal ancestry if we follow family- honored planting
calendars, or planting an heirloom peony from our mother's garden.
Our garden can afford
us the rich opportunity to employ all of our senses, including
the intuitive. Our gardens draw us again and again to pray or dance, play or meditate,
to float on a fragrance and nourish our bodies. It's possible to merge with our plants,
our setting, our task, or our ceremony to such a heightened degree that we
recognize ourselves fully as a divine aspect of Nature.
Secret gardens dig
deep into the psyche. From childhood we carry images of
enchanted space, like Sleeping Beauty's castle, ringedd by a wall of thorns until the
young prince breaks the spell. Discovering a lost paradise is another powerful myth
that has its roots in religious symbolism. We are all searching for Eden. Literature
too offers models that make us long for secret spaces of our own. In The Secret
Garden, Frnces Hodgson Burnett's classic tale of Edwardian England, the orphan
Mary re- awakens a lost, locked garden, hidden behind high walls. Equally magical is
the crumbling chateau discovered by the hero of Alain-Furnier's Le Grand Meaulnes,
inhabited by children and invaded by bushes run wild. Stories like these continue to
resonate throughout adult life in dreams of a place apart- a secret paradise that
refreshes the spirits as well as the senses, a place to which you alone hold the key.
Moving deeper into a secret garden, you find yourself trapped by a mysterious geometry
of man-
made urn and gangly trees. A fountain overflows somewhere up ahead, and children's laughter
echoes out of sight guiding you to the labyrinth's still heart.
The best gardens, like the best books, are the ones that invite you to read between
the lines.
They turn and twist, tempting you to explore the byways of their plot and to enter into their The
second kind will usually be found in larger gardens of 'rooms-within-rooms' transforming the
garden into a journey through different moods, sensations and settings; a series of subtle
mysteries. The hidden rooms are Chinese boxes whose locks and secrets you must somehow
unpick. What lies at the corner tucked into the folds of a smaller garden end of the twisting
path? A bench is sighted — a place to sit on a summers evening, perhaps, through leaves.
Water spills faintly beyond or a scented enclosure filled with flowers a thickening bamboo.
Clues like these draw that you on towards an unknown goal.
http://www.arthistory.sbc.edu/sacredplaces/sacredgeo.html
