Lois de Vries' Garden Views

Just in time to help us escape the winter doldrums, writer-director Vivienne De Courcy’s gardener-centric, romantic adventure story, Dare To Be Wild, has been released on all on-demand platforms including iTunes Movies, Comcast Xfinity, Amazon Video, Sony PlayStation, and many more.  The film traces the uplifting true story of Irish landscape designer Mary Reynolds’ “hero’s journey,” from ripped-off celebrity go-fer to youngest-ever Gold Medal winner in London’s fabled Chelsea Flower Show. For garden geeks like me, this is just the ticket for injecting some much-welcomed color and inspiration into an otherwise grey winter. And for eco-freaks like me, who hope to weave people back into the web of life, the film holds out the promise that there’s a way to touch the souls of those who have become disconnected from the natural world by “making wild nature fashionable.” In her directorial debut, De Courcy focuses on the importance of humanity’s place in Nature. She hopes, she...

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          Where I’ve Been and Where I’m Going Looking back. 2013 was a year of ups and downs and all-arounds during which I eventually returned to the place where my journey had begun. My connection with the natural world has always been a profoundly spiritual one and that is where my strengths lie. While I do enjoy the horticultural eye candy that the growers spread out before us each spring, my mission and my message run much deeper. The past year has provided opportunities for me to more fully integrate my interests in physics and metaphysics to produce a clear vision of how people who love to garden can begin to repair some of the damage that humankind has done to planet Earth. This approach doesn’t appeal to everyone, but I can tell you from experience that there are more of us out there than you can imagine. Two years of transition. I spent 2012 recovering from breast cancer, testing my physical limits, and trying to keep pace with my p...

Cinqo de Mayo Rose I t seems that the medical establishment is just catching up with what inner gardeners everywhere already know: Mindfulness meditation is good for us and can reduce stress-related illnesses and boost the immune system. According to Dr. Hillary Campbell, as quoted in a recent Sacramento Bee article, http://www.sacbee.com/2013/04/01/5306627/medical-establishment-ponders.html , “(Mindfulness meditation) brings on a sense of peace and calmness. And it helps your attention and focus.” Gardening done well is a moving meditation. After all, if you don’t pay close attention to what you’re doing and stay in the moment, you could destroy the very things you’re trying to grow. The repetitive movements of tasks such as weeding are familiar to every gardener as a mechanism for slowing down and looking inward. Many gardening tasks require us to sit or kneel on, or dig in the ground, where we inhale the earthy smells and feel the texture of soils and plants. We physically rec...

Although Dr. Mays did not have garden design in mind when he said this, the spirit of his thought is a suitable one for us to incorporate when cultivating our inner gardener practice: "It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your ideal, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture. It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for. Not failure, but low aim is a sin." ~ Benjamin E. Mays ~

GUEST BLOG: On April 21 st I will interview my writing coach, author Dr. Eric Maisel, about his book Rethinking Depression, which was recently released in paperback. It blows the lid off the need to label and medicate oneself as depressed just because life isn’t one continuous bed of roses. Gardening creatives can design a pathway that carries them through tough times by developing the deeper meaning that gardening holds for them. Rethinking Depression is available in paperback or Kindle.

 If you feel unsure about where or how to invest your time, energy, or money, you're not alone. Making choices about how much money to spend, whether to grow your own plants from seed or cuttings, which plants to choose, etc., must also take into consideration where you are in your own life cycle. For example, if you want to plant oak trees in order to enjoy watching wildlife eat the acorns, remember that the trees will not produce any nuts until they are 20 – 30 years old. To begin, create a bubble diagram that shows your planned activity areas; hardscape and plantscape; an inventory of what will be left once you’ve moved, or removed, what you don’t like; and a rough indication of where you want various types of new features, ornaments, and plants. For some gardeners, the next step is the most difficult: Choosing how you want your garden to grow. Do you want to look out on masses of a specific color? Do you want to collect a variety of the same species of plants, such as rose...