Garden Route Therapy

I just finished reading one of my father’s recommendations, Man’s Search for Meaning, by the Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor E. Frankl. Frankl describes an experience he witnessed that speaks to a spiritual relationship between people and trees. This is a story from a concentration camp of a young woman who knows she is dying:

“Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, “This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.” Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. “I often talk to this tree,” she said to me. I was startled and didn’t quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious?…Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. “Yes.” What did it say to her? She answered, “It said to me, ‘I am here-I am here-I am life, eternal life.’”

I will be th gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

I will look at the cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!

-Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950)

At the St. Ann’s Garden Club this week, a few of the ladies enjoyed reciting Millay’s poetry, bringing the outdoors in.

Billie Jean

The newest addition to the Providence Farm Family.

The first lamb to be born this year:

Sunday January 20th, 2008.

Ewe and lamb seen here under a heating lamp in the barn.

At the moment I am enjoying reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I was taken by Gilbert’s thought that “You cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water (171).” Working at Providence Farm requires a change of pace for me. You have just to be present with the people who come to the farm, not always walking ahead because you are in a rush to go nowhere for an unspecified time. In the process of taking the time to get to know the people, I find I can hear myself think and discover new things about myself while working in the greenhouse, transplanting lettuce in the header house or baking cookies with the seniors from the St. Anne’s Garden Club.

Providence Farm is a therapeutic community, in Duncan, British Columbia, with programs in horticultural therapy and vocational training. The focus is “towards those not easily accepted elsewhere”. I find the landscape itself quite therapeutic, located at the base of Mount Tzouhalem. On my second day here, I awoke to find a surprise dusting of snow magically covering the land.

I arrived on Vancouver Island just last Sunday and I am in the Cowichan Valley to complete a horticultural therapy internship for the duration of 1,000 hours. The Canadian Horticultural Therapy Association views an Internship as “a combination of academic and clinical work under the supervision of a Registered Horticultural Therapist”. Colleen Davis, the Rehabilitation Manager at Providence Farm and a Horticultural Therapist Registered, has agreed to support my learning over the coming six months. The recently released Internship Guidelines from the CHTA describe the purpose of an HT Internship “as a major educational component with a practical focus for experience and for achieving point requirements towards professional registration as a Horticultural Therapist in Canada.”  I am excited by the diversity of programs offered at Providence Farm and I am interested in exploring how practices of caring for the land can be integrated into healing practices.

The very final component of the Biodynamic Farming & Gardening program was hosted at the new FoodShare building in Toronto. With a December session focus on nutrition, we began with a question posed by a student of Rudolf Steiner who asked, “Why…is the will for action, for carrying out of the spiritual impulses so weak?” In Agriculture, we read Steiner’s response that reflects concern for the impact of modern agriculture on the spirit. Over 80 years ago he had the insight to suggest that, “This is a problem of nutrition. Nutrition as it is today does not supply the strength necessary for manifesting the spirit in physical life. A bridge can no longer be built from thinking to will and action. Food plants no longer contain the forces people need for this” (261). One is left to wonder what he would conclude in regards to the quality of the majority of food we produce and ingest today.

It was lovely to be amongst friends, at the Julien Project before the holidays, making pine cone bear decorations together.

I was asked at a workshop what I liked most about November and I automatically responded by saying I did NOT like November. I am not really sure what I meant by this reaction because in truth, I did not know November very well. That was before I took Tanzie our dog for an early morning walk along the Rouge River and experienced the first serious frost covered landscape of the season. In this moment, I came to appreciate how magnificent this month really can be. Perhaps November gets ignored as it is overshadowed by the dramatic period before, when the leaves on the trees are on fire with colour, and the period afterwards, when if we are lucky, we get a major dumping of snow. On this particular November morning, every grass blade was transformed into glass, every leaf shape accentuated by a white outline and the Sedam had taken on a magical new colour. The land presented as a confectionery wonderland surrounded by glistening light. It was as if we had found ourselves to be in Wonka’s Woods.

October brought its own set of lessons as I had the chance to take part in a number of community garden fall clean-ups and urban harvest festivals which represent an exciting new trend of reconnecting cities with their food. My main garden maintenance contribution seemed to be working the mulch, an essential component in organic gardening. I learned about the value of adding mulch at this time of year to ensure the soil remains at a more consistent temperature during the winter, especially important with our current freeze-thaw patterns. At the Children’s Garden in High Park we moved compost into the raised beds and covered them with straw mulch. In a few needy spots we included a layer of comfrey leaves that will release plant nutrients.

At the The Julien Project I had the opportunity to lead two fall horticultural therapy sessions with the adults with autism group. We could not escape raking activities in the courtyard. This type of manual work was a new experience for some of the participants and I was not sure they would be too happy with the assignment. It was very apparent however, that the opportunity to give back to the program was appreciated, that the work provided a sense of accomplishment and that new life skills were being learned in the process. In an effort to salvage remnants of the season, we also went on a walkabout to collect fallen leaves throughout the Ignatius Jesuit Centre property. This was followed indoors by filling the presses with our favorite finds.

As for December’s recent arrival, I have felt pushed into accepting that the season is changing, despite being ahead of the official winter solstice. It is a reality check when the tools get lost below a foot of snow because you could not bring yourself to admit you might not have another day of outdoor gardening for some time. As the children from the High Park Children’s Garden know, it is all in the hands of the Garden Protectors now.

I’ve been hearing a lot of interest in seed balls lately and wanted to post some information on my blog. I was first introduced to the neat concept at an introductory workshop on permaculture offered by Garden Jane. During the summer I was fortunate to have the first-hand opportunity to view people of all ages, especially children, interact with seed balls at various community events. I found people to be generally inspired by the concept and that they had a lot of fun getting their hands into the mixture to form the little truffle like balls. Seed balls are a method for distributing seeds by encasing them in a mixture of clay and compost. They are great because you don’t have to do any digging to get planting.  The clay protects the seeds from animals and also ensures there is enough moisture available before the seeds germinate. You can also use-up old seeds when you are unsure about the rate of germination. By having a denser crop, this approach encourages the strongest plants to thrive. Masanobu Fukuoka, a Japanese farmer and author of the One-Straw Revolution is considered a pioneer of no-till farming methods. He is credited with re-introducing the ancient technique of seed balls (direct translation “Earth Dumplings”). On the Evergreen Forum you can download a recipe for seed balls & read or join the discussion on seed ball experiments in Canada.

Fall view of the 8,000 square foot roof top garden at the Hotel @ MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.   The space is generally very accessible with the exception of the path that cuts through the grass to a private meeting spot.  It’s a pleasure to be able to look down on the garden from the rooms at the hotel and the space offers a perfect breakout opportunity to connect with the outdoors while attending a conference .

At the end of the day, after getting lots of great project ideas from attending a Horticultural Therapy course offered by Mitchell Hewson at the Homewood Health Centre in Guelph, I was fortunate to find myself at the on-site labyrinth with the late afternoon light just right and a backdrop of golden fall colours. There was a crispness in the air as I walked around the labyrinth quickly to keep warm and took in the fragrance of the Mother of Thyme which forms the outline of the labyrinth, following the Chartres Cathedral design. The labyrinth was designed by Virginia Burt of Visionscapes Landscape Architects Inc., a Canadian leader in healing garden design.