Tuning in to the quiet of a garden is a powerful antidote to a noisy, busy life. For many years of my working life, I have supported people with heavy commitments and pressured lives. Offering them the quiet of a peaceful natural environment can encourage people to de-stress, step back, and focus on new perspectives.
In 2011, a friend suggested that what I was doing with my garden was akin to what the Quiet Garden Movement had being doing in the UK since 1992: I decided to find out more. Member hosts of the movement make their gardens available through the year for restful, reflective refreshment and warm hospitality. Realising my garden needn’t be manicured, of sizeable acreage, or clinging to an isolated hillside, my Sanctum Quiet Garden became affiliated to this wonderful network of special gardens in June of the same year.
My garden is an ordinary garden, containing weeds and plants sometimes in almost equal measure. Sights, sounds and textures are nonetheless compelling: running water, birdsong, rustling trees, colourful and sensuously perfumed flowers. These assist natural connection and contemplation. Stepping stones leading to a wooden cabin, a winding grass path on which to walk bare-foot, inviting nooks and crannies with strategically placed seats and colourfully comfortable cushions await and invite visitors to step gently into restful and restorative reflection. These moments form vital punctuation marks to a busy life.
The huge variety of visitors to Quiet Gardens personally connect with the environment in whatever way they feel comfortable, but peaceful reflection, silence and solitude, awe and wonder, and for many, prayer, are the key and common vital marks of the experience. There are quiet garden hosts across the world, including Australia, Canada, Africa, America, as well as the UK. Knowing I am connected with them through the shared values of such the Quiet Garden Movement is awe inspiring in itself.
Gardening is universally a quiet, mindful and meaningful activity, connecting us with the natural ingredients of growth, seasons, the earth at our feet, the infinite sky above, and life and death. The simplicity of allowing ourselves time just to “be”, contemplating, in a garden, surely is the icing on the top of a very delicious cake – which reminds me, warm drinks and delicious cake are a usual feature of a Quiet Garden too.
The Quiet Garden Movement is an ecumenical Christian charity that offers simple hospitality: this year the movement celebrates its 25th anniversary. This global network of gardens and wide variety of settings enables people of all ages and backgrounds to access outdoor space, nourishing their mind, body and soul through silence, contemplation and prayer. With increasing recognition of the health and wellbeing benefits of mindful reflection, Quiet Gardens are just as essential as stopping spaces today as they have been for 25 years.
- Tina Jefferies is a Quiet Garden host in Herefordshire and Trustee of the Quiet Garden Movement. To learn more about the Quiet Gardens Movement, locate a garden in your neighbourhood, or find out how to become a host, visit quietgarden.org.