Our partners at Green Hope Farm are the Angels and the Nature Spirits or Elementals of the Nature Kingdom. The Angels design our gardens and hold the master plan for everything that happens here. The people plant and maintain the gardens. The Nature Spirits hold all creation, including our gardens, in form. In the gardens, this means they bring everything into form and then hold each herb, flower, vegetable and tree in physical manifestation. The Nature Spirits also offer a wealth of practical information about all our garden tasks.
A Nature Spirit can be seen over the main vegetable garden to the left of the flying pennants.
Each year our cooperative partnership with the Angels and Nature Spirits follows the same growing cycle, though the spiritual and literal harvests are endlessly diverse.
In the fall, as we put the previous season's gardens to bed, we spend time with the Angels and Nature Spirits, harvesting the lessons of the gardens and thanking them for their beautiful garden creations which have served as our classrooms.
Kathy mulches the black currants and red currants for winter.
Jim and Ben mulch the Venus Garden in late fall. The Angels have us use a lot of mulch hay. Last year we used over 300 bales.
At the Autumnal Equinox, we pause in our work and take time to recommit ourselves to our partnership with the Angels and Nature Spirits and to the year ahead. This is a good time to ask for help with specific issues in our lives as well as for help with the overall mission of Green Hope Farm. From their overview, the Angels know exactly what garden lessons will offer support and encouragement and illumination. They also already know what we need to work on! Nonetheless, the Angels tell me the dialog is valuable. It sharpens our awareness of what we need to learn and helps us open to be a full participant in the garden lessons ahead.
During the early winter there is a quiet time as our input is synthesized with the Angel's vision for the coming growing season.
Deer prints in the snow beneath our young apple trees
At the Winter Solstice, the plans for the year's gardens are made available to us. I converse with the Angels and receive detailed plans for every garden. They choose an overall pattern for each garden and specific patterns of plants for each row. Frequently, they mix herbs, annual flowers and vegetables in the same row. The flowers, herbs and vegetables which the Angels choose vary greatly from year to year. They pick the exact variety of each plant and also give us a precise number to plant. They also tell us which seed houses to buy the seeds from.
The garden shapes and plant varieties chosen often make no sense to my mind, but they assemble into gardens that have a beauty, a playfulness, a radiant good health and a palpable energetic power. From the beginning, it was easy to follow the Angels' guidance because the gardens which resulted from their directions were much more vibrant than conventional gardens. Time spent in these gardens is an incredible joy.
Come the Vernal Equinox, the baton passes from our Angelic planners to the "can do" Nature Spirits. During the "hands on" work of growing the seedlings and planting and maintaining the gardens, the Nature Spirits are our guides and resources in every garden puzzle. How to move that manure pile most efficiently? Ask a gnome. How to perk up a drooping perennial? Ask another gnome!
One of our first tasks in spring is to mulch every garden and then lay out the garden plans in the actual gardens, using string. Not only do we use a lot of string, but we do a lot of head-scratching. Everything we remember from geometry class comes in handy, but usually it is the Nature Spirits who give us the practical answer to our geometry problems!
Here, two early Green Hope Farm gardeners, Shifra Levine and Anita Walling, mulch the "Dancing Angels" garden.
Here Shifra and Anita lay out the geometries of the "Life Force" garden, which later became our main Red Shiso garden.
The Angels and Nature Spirits bring unconditional love and a wonderful sense of humor to our joint work. The lessons of the gardens are sometimes painful and difficult for our personalities, but they always serve our higher Self and are delivered with immense love. Echoing this emotional support, the gardens are full of embracing curves.
Here you can see the curve of lettuce and bean rows in the middle of one year's version of the main vegetable garden.
These circular rows hold energy much better than the conventional straight row gardens. When there are straight lines, they join with other lines to keep the energy contained and moving. For example, in the star mandalas, the points are often capped with a circular bed.
The geometric patterns of the gardens that the Angels design are very different each season. Stars, concentric rings, labyrinths, spirals--even a butterfly mandala--have been just a few of the layouts we have explored together.
During one growing season, the vegetable garden was composed almost entirely of spirals. In the foreground is a spiral of leeks and fava beans.
Life purpose tent of 1993
When the gardens were open to the public in 1993, the main vegetable garden had a circus tent of Flowers in the center, where people could sit. The Angels told us the energetics of this Flower tent made it a good place for people to contemplate their life purpose. The Sweet Alyssum offered a path of attunement to divine purpose. The Flowers over and around the tent included Scarlet Runner Bean, Comfrey, and Sunflower and also worked towards this energetic purpose.
The Angels often have us make spiral dreamcatchers for the pea fences. Here is an early look at these pea fences.
Here is a view of one season's vegetable garden in June, when the pea fences with their spirals are still visible
August in the main vegetable garden
By the end of the summer, it is hard to see the geometric patterns as crisply as when the gardens are first planted but the energetic benefits of the pattern are apparent in the abundant produce, beauty and vibrant health of the Flowers and vegetables growing in the gardens. The high vibration of each garden makes for very high vibration Flowers, which in turn makes for higher vibration Flower Essences.
Our desire to make the best Flower Essences possible means that we also follow the guidance of the Angels and Nature Spirits about which Flowers to make into Flower Essences, when to make these Essences, where in the gardens to make these Essences, what blossoms to select and in every way, how to make these Essences. We follow their every instruction from the moment we plant a seed for a Flower until the moment we send off a bottle of this Flower's Essence to you. The Angels and Nature Spirits know how to hold the high vibrations of our Flower Essences in physical manifestation. They teach us, in everything we do together, how to hold this vibration of love and illumination in manifestation so that we can send Green Hope Farm Flower Essences out into the world to each of you in their purest, most radiant form possible.