The Garden As A Muse

The definition of a muse is ‘a source of inspiration’.

I discovered my garden during lockdown in 2020. It must be noted, it had actually been my garden for seven years previous to that but I had never done anything other than simply look at it.

In 2020, it called to me with a heart-pull to grow flowers. “Why don’t you turn your rose farm (the name of my house) back into a rose farm?” came a clear voice into my head one day as I was just in that half-conscious phase between sleeping and wakefulness. I sat up in bed, such clear focus on that statement (for it was not a question, it was a clear directive), picked up my journal that’s always next to my bed in case of moment such as these and a whole stream of ideas and inspiration poured out onto the page. Things that had never crossed my mind before.

And thus began my love affair with my garden and growing flowers.

I consider my garden to be my muse in a number of ways.

Firstly it teaches me with rude awakenings about my own ideas of who’s in charge here. I can plan, create spreadsheets of sowing schedules, build raised beds, water the plants when they need it -and the a slug attack can decimate a whole tray of seedlings over night. I can grow cornflowers a meter tall then wake up one morning to find the wind has destroyed them all. I can sometimes sow a whole tray of seeds and only three will germinate. Why? It’s a mystery. Instead there’s a realisation that this a a co-creation. That Mother Nature and I are, at source, the same thing, in different forms. I have hands to open seed packets and legs to carry watering cans and Mother Nature supplies the life force, the sunshine and rain, the very soil itself. Sometimes when my hands are in the dirt, there is a simple knowing that we are the same.

Next, in the quiet hours of sowing, potting on and planting my seedlings, the mind gets very still and quiet. There’s a gentle flow of back and forth, a natural rhythm, calming of my soul. Sometimes the radio quietly playing, sometimes just the birds to hear. Delicious solitude - an escape from everyone and everything. In the greenhouse is where I get to meet myself.

And then the flowers. I spend time journaling to bring spirit into form so that my eyes can see it. And there are always flowers gathered from my own garden next to me as I do. I’m breath-taken by their beauty. I can gaze for what feels like hours, in awe of the shapes and the colours and the stark ‘here I am being nothing other than what i am-ness’ about them. And as I gaze, thoughts come to be to be turned into writing.

So, if the earth calls to you, heed her call, my friend.

She has so much to offer you.

Nicola x