There Is a Garden in You

What are you growing in yours?

A bunch of flowers picked at Evergreen by Lara. Video by Lara.

I’m sitting at my desk trying to write, but my eyes keep drifting to the views outside.

The window to my right provides an outlook of two green water tanks and Australian natives in bloom. When I look to the left through the lounge room windows, I see the winter lake, several willow trees, reeds fringing the lake, a distant row of Melaleucas, and a family of nine newly hatched wood ducks (maned geese) with two doting parents, fossicking at the water’s edge.

It's tempting to leave my chair and go outside. I resist for several minutes, then give in to the urge.

While wandering through the spring garden, which is a cottage-like, whimsical collection of flowers, vegetables, “weeds” and young trees, I recall the symbolic meanings of what I see.

• Roses – love

• Sunflowers – happiness

• Chrysanthemums – friendship

• Lavender – serenity

• Rosemary – remembrance

• Camellia – resilience

• Olive tree - peace

Being outside, surrounded by the garden, I’m reminded that I also have a garden in me.

I don’t sprout roses or olive trees, but I can nurture within me the meanings of the things I see: love; happiness; friendship; serenity; remembrance; resilience; peace.

These are the sorts of beautiful things we can all grow in our inner garden.

The Garden in You

My garden at Evergreen will never be finished. The day will never come when I dust the soil off my hands, put away the trowel and snippers, and declare, ‘Ah, the garden is all done now. I’ll never have to do another thing in it!’

A garden is never complete, never finished, always evolving. Things are shooting; flowering; fruiting; seeding; lying dormant; dying.

Our inner garden is never complete either. We can never have too much love, happiness, friendship, serenity, remembrance, resilience or peace.

Just like the weather prompts plants to grow, life situations prompt us to grow.

Our inner garden is invisible but that doesn’t mean it’s not there.

It’s where we grow things of beauty that make our faces glow.

We may not all have an outside garden, but we all have an inner garden, and that’s the most important one.

On page 99 of his book, Oneness With All Life, Eckhart Tolle wrote:

And there remains always a still but intensely alive space at the centre of the wheel, a core of peace in the midst of activity that is both the source of all and untouched by it all.

This space at our core is where we grow timeless, changeless things that make our inner and outer worlds places of beauty.

Lara's bunch of flowers arranged in a vase.

We may be surrounded by gardens outside.

But let’s never forget that there is also a garden in us.

What are you growing in yours?

With love, Marlane