As the decades pass by quickly through seasons of bountiful gardening, I see clearly how everything is connected. Timing planting and harvesting according to the Moon and zodiac offers correct timing for success, growing your food organically supports health, herbs support every body system to lessen pain and disease, and what we do to the Earth affects our health. We are in a closed system and there is no “away” to throw garbage or chemical waste.
Layering one system on another has revealed these truths for me. From my early horticulture degree from University of Wisconsin, Madison, to specializing in herbs, then becoming certified organic in 1989, adding Celestial Gardening methods, and studying astrology the infinite web of life is revealed. I have learned to go to Nature for wisdom and news.
One spring, I headed out to observe the garden to see how the harsh winter with no snow treated my perennial herbs. All the beautiful rows of Mediterranean herbs were dead, the lavender, thyme, and sage. After three years of improving the soil, this was fertile ground to create a formal educational garden! In a garden there is always renewal. What garden should I create? Shortly after that a friend gave me a book about the Chakra System, with the beautiful drawings representing each area on the cover. This was obviously my new garden design!
The Chakra system is a Eastern method of organizing body systems into seven sections. This multilayered method for looking at the body connects the physical body with emotions, psychological development, colors, elements, planets, and more. Chakra is Sanskrit for wheel and shows how energy flows through the body, evolving as it moves up the spine. I love the interconnectedness of this system. For example, we all have experienced emotional upsets affecting our bodies, and corrections can be made with support of herbs and other natural remedies, like viewing a sunset.
I created a medicinally potent educational sanctuary with the design of the Chakra System. This is a fabulous way to unpack and weave these modalities into a real life, beautiful, textured, scented, and energized. In fact, while two other women and I were creating the structures, one dreamed that this garden had seven shimmering Buddhas holding energy above it.
The first chakra begins at the base of the spine and represents our roots, our tribe, and where we are coming from. This expands to the sexual organs and circulatory system in the second chakra.