Other dreams.

 

A few months ago a friend of ours said we should get a copy of Mary Reynolds’s book; The Garden Awakening. Our friend said she thought we would thoroughly enjoy it and she couldn’t have been more right. The book arrived in the mail one morning and our building and gardening projects were abandoned for a few hours, while we poured over the book with a feeling of coming home.

It was as if the book was written about our garden or as if we had created our garden space after reading the book. Most of our thoughts, dreams and plans were written down on the pages and we were reading with a real sense of wonder and joy. Since then we have come back to the book many times for inspiration, encouragement and advice.

In the book, Mary Reynolds describes how we are all guardians of our plots of land as opposed to gardeners and we have the privilege to work with nature and forming a bond with our land, benefiting ourselves as well as the land. If you only wish to own one book about gardens this is the one. It describes in a revolutionary way how we can move forward, healing the land and ourselves at the same time. If we all work with Mother Nature instead of against her, the benefits can be reaped now as well as for future generations. Humans simply cannot survive without a healthy relationship with nature.

Last week we went to the cinema and were thrilled to see a trailer for a film about Mary Reynolds life. Tomorrow night, Friday the 23^rd it has its Ireland and UK premiere in the cinemas. Dare To Be Wild, directed by Vivienne de Courcey tells the story of Mary’s life leading up to the win of a gold medal for garden design at the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show. You can read more about the film here. We are planning to see it tomorrow night and wish to take this opportunity to recommend it to our blog readers. If the film is anything like the book Mary has written, you will not be disappointed. We believe Mary is a force to be reckoned with, a person with the determination and compassion to help change the world into a place where nature is returned to its original state, away from pesticides, herbicides and monoculture. Hopefully the film will bring her message across to a wider audience.

All of the pictures in this post were taken in our garden on a sunny September morning.