A garden becomes a sanctuary for deep listening and a place that animates the creative life force within you. The power of intention ignites this sacred communication between you and nature, allowing you to connect with the creative potential that is possible within this divine union.

In Bay City, Michigan, a small and very special section of the Saginaw River has become an inner-city wildlife sanctuary. Within a stretch of four city blocks along Arbor Street, in the center of Bay City, the natural habitat is encouraged and existing sea walls are being, or have been removed, creating an inner-city sanctuary for wildlife. 

All living beings and elements have multiple dimensions—physical, emotional and spiritual. Likewise, the Amazon region holds all these dimensions and possibly more, within its animate entities like plants and animals and inanimate ones like minerals.  

Botanical sanctuaries not only save our precious native plants from unconscious predation they provide healing at a source level by feeding our essential nature so that both plants and people are held in life-giving balance.

Sanctuary gardens bring people closer to Nature.  They are a safe place where the outside cares of the world do not intrude. They can be a vegetable or flower garden, a special tree or even a single blossom. They are a healing refuge for our bodies, mind and spirit.  People need gardens to re-member and bring balance into their lives.

We offer Gratitude for sanctuary gardens, dedicated to the sacred, where there is safety for all beings. For those cultivated places where humans consciously co-create with Nature to bring beauty, healing, inspiration, peace, nourishment and remembrance. 

Connecting with Nature, Giving Gratitude for all the gifts we receive from the Earth

by Timothy P McLaughlin

I waited and waited a great while
before I knew enough
about listening
to hear the bright ones
speak,
and only faintly at first,
so I wasn’t sure if anything
had happened at all.

We have made the walk from water to earth many times as humans, yes? I think about how we came from the ocean as a species. We grow in a fluid inside our mother’s wombs similar in makeup to the ocean before we ever take our first breath. And we walk the Medicine Wheel each and every year from the water of the west in autumn to the earth of north in winter, until our very last breath. 

By Rachel Baird

I am writing from the Holy Isle
Just off the eastern shore of Lamlash, 
Isle of Arran, Scotland.
During Green Tara prayer hour
I let the waves of chant wash over me and quickly moved into a lucid dream.

I dream of the whale:
Out in the dark waters
We are capsized by forgetting,
She swims to me
And puts my hand in her mouth,
Begs further exploration -
I feel the brittle curve inside her sinew
Like playing a harp
Or building a wattle,
Then choose to climb this baleen fence,

I grew up just blocks from the Ocean in San Francisco where I walked the beach nearly every day and was lulled to sleep at night by the sound of fog horns.  Sometimes, when in the water – I could feel these wave pulses of energy moving through my body and sometimes, at the shore, I could feel life forms moving far off inside the ocean.  I knew they could feel me as well and were communicating.  

My mother was holding me looking at the waves when suddenly a huge wave broke over us. The shock and sound of the wet spray gave me a baptism I never forgot. I grew up on two islands, one urban,the other rural, and at a very young age I was diving into the waves and buoyed up on their crests, or watching reckless teenagers jump into the East River trafficked by tugs and cargo ships headed out to sea. 

We offer gratitude to Ocean, the one great Ocean of the world, whom we call by so many names. Grandmother Ocean, thank you for Life! For the lives of our most ancient ancestors whom you cradled and fed, For the lives of all who came after, who stayed in your waters or ventured on land. For the lives of all the plants whom you water through the clouds, and for the  tiny phytoplankton who give us breath. We thank you Ocean, for the lives of all our relatives.

By Laura Williams

We all have a longing for the wild but we are trained by our industrial consumer society to consider ourselves separate from Nature.  We are taught from the beginning of our lives that we, humans, are both dominant over and in danger from the wild. 

By MR Baird 

I have descended out of the Northwest
Back into civilization
Sounds of cars and jets,
Weed eaters now hurt my head,
I don’t belong here anymore
Now that I think of him,
That stag,

By Lauren Valle
To My Enlightened Self

Silent self, self made of stone
Self that witnessed the birth of the ocean and
bathed in the torrents of mucus and blood
Self that melts the boundaries between her own beauty
and the beauty of the world

By Emerson Gale 

On  March 10th I spoke with Sally J. Mark, “Sal” about how to share the truth of plant sentience. Initially, I wanted to interview her to learn about the Music of the Plants devices from Damanhur,www.musicoftheplants.com for which she has been facilitating workshops around the country.