Healing with Enchanting Garden Moments & Art

Natural light luminously dancing on leaves, the smooth vibrant coloured petals gently opening into a blossom and patterns of nature ever changing with new growth. One of my happy places the garden has played a profound role in my healing journey over these past few years. Enchanting moments in the garden have brought me peace, supportive healing and most importantly inspired paintings.

The garden, full of a quietness with a deliciously satisfying side order of peace. Perhaps this is not only my own experience, I am certain others have similar encounters. However, for me the garden grounds me and connects me to the natural world. In fact, it is my main connection in the world as I live housebound with chronic illness and disability from M.E.. Since I was a young child I have loved nothing more during the summer months than the feeling of walking barefoot and this connectedness to the earth.

Sometimes I sit in the moment mindfully soaking in the gardens natural calming ability. Sitting restores my energy giving me a greater sense of balance and harmony. Sitting allows for me to simply, patiently be in the moment. Sitting inspires my creativity giving me vision for paintings. Surrounded by plants, flowers, trees, wildlife, insects, bugs, bees and butterflies all filling and delighting my soul. It is my happy place where I can be me. Free to reenergize, restore, rest. I am beginning to realize that this is what is painted into my garden paintings thus making connections with my audience. Garden Paintings are enchanting moments of my own experiences in the garden painted on a panel with vibrant paint.

The most remarkable aspect of my healing garden are the parallels the garden and my body share. They are both ever changing yet often invisible and both move forward at an extremely slow pace. However, there is always change if one slows themselves to really observe. One needs to have garden awareness as they do body awareness, I have the gift of both seeing the beauty in my garden always. Patience is needed to truly enjoy natural life and in healing ones body.

I adore wildlife in their natural element within my garden. Squirrels run the fence line from corner to corner. Bumblebees pollinating flowers through the gardens getting a wee bit intoxicated from all the pollen we provide for them. Butterflies landing on the Molly Butterfly bush in the front garden, planted in memory of our dog Declan. Birds perching everywhere and anywhere on branches and limbs throughout the gardens. Our resident cardinals and robins building nests for young ones, where they get their wings throughout our garden. Occasionally we need to rescue one out of the dog yard, although our dogs don’t have prey drive. Fionny had a robin friend as puppy that we had to rescue several times, we called him Fat Albert. Dragonflies in the depths of heat in summer coasting high above the bumble garden catching bugs. These wonderful living creatures are my daily connection to the world surrounding me.

We have designed an organic edible patch in our garden, our wildlife friends often finding themselves in the patch filling their stomachs. Next season we will fence in the edible garden patch so as to collect all our bounty and share a few pieces with our wildlife friends. I simply must covet my energy carefully and need to able to harvest the bounty given the energy needed to tend the patch.

As I write this piece I am watching the female cardinal perched and feeding in the rose of sharon bush off the studio patio with several large bumblebees. The female is named after my mother, Little Frannie. She is chirping and dancing about on the branches happily. The male is named Little Jimmy after my father perched over in the honey suckle tree across the yard, they are devoted partners the cardinals.

In the garden my hands are in dirt, red handled clippers that belonged to my dad or my camera striped onto my hand. One of the best gifts Brandon has bought me is my light weight Canon camera that allows for me to capture photos of the garden from my eye and perspective. Never ever, have I taken more photos of anything in my life as I do my garden. The happiness this creative act gives me us unmeasurable. Subsequently, the photos inspire compositions and act a visual memory for my Garden Paintings a collection of paintings inspired by the enchanting moments. This practice has become one of the most enjoyable parts of my creative process other than painting. It is also satisfying when I am not of the energy level to paint but can takes some photos.

How has all of this helped my healing journey you may ask? Every single detail of the garden and my connection to it has supported my healing. When I first became chronically ill, I didn’t have the energy to make it outside of the house. Little by little getting into my garden was progress. Huge progress in the beginning. Being of the ability occasionally to plant, dig in a container or prune a flower is progress. Walking the length of the garden with a rest at the end was and still is progress. All of this is healing. Taking my body and mind to a place where once again I can accomplish a task. Healing is moving forward like the garden blooms and grows. Like the garden I need times of rest and sometimes hibernation like a garden through winter. And then when the time is right my body continues new growth like new petals on a flower.

My garden was neglected when I first moved back into the house. There was much work to be done bringing the garden back to its true form after the passing of both of my parents. I never dreamed that I wouldn’t be able to do the gardening work. Thus the garden has been brought back by my husband Brandon and as my health permits, both slowly and sometimes painstakingly. Each success in the garden and healing within my body met equally with a feeling happiness, satisfaction and relief. The garden teaches patience, a quality authentic to my being. Patiently we move forward in healing together.

Truthfully the garden has healed me more as inspiration for my art than any pill, treatment or doctor. Having moments inspire the act of painting has taken me away from a daily focus on treating symptoms of my chronic illness and disability. Now I strive to have a painting session each day with respect for my bodies limitations and needs. A few minutes when my body and mind are completely absorbed in the act of painting with no focus on anything else at all. Each day I wake up with the hope able to to paint. I wouldn’t have this if my garden hadn’t opened itself to me as my inspiration and muse for painting.

Garden paintings are not only a collection of beautiful paintings but also a creative action through painting used daily to heal the body and mind. It should come as no surprise the consistent feedback from art patrons is a sense of ongoing happiness experienced when in the company of my paintings. Given that the act of painting itself has brought such deep happiness to my daily life each painting is filled with brushstrokes made when I am at my most happiest. Garden Paintings have become paintings that make people feel happy.