The Findhorn Garden

One gives up everything to put God and his will first, and then all one's needs are met from God's abundant supply." At that, many people wrote Findhorn off as "airy-fairy" and unrealistic. It was, in fact, almost three years before Sir George came to Findhorn and saw for himself that this principle really did work. Following his visit he wrote an enthusiastic memorandum to Lady Eve Balfour, founder of the Soil Association, a group dedicated to organic farming and gardening. Sir George was sure she would be interested in our work, especially since she is the author of The Living Soil, a widely read book that deals with the oneness of all life and man's responsibility to the creatures he shares Earth with--animals, plants and insects. Sir George's memorandum began: "At my Easter visit we sat on a lawn among daffodils and narcissi as beautiful and large as I have ever seen, growing in beds crowded with other flowers. I was fed on the best vegetables I have ever tasted. A young chestnut tree eight feet high stood as a central focus feature, bursting with astonishing power and vigour. Fruit trees of all sorts were in blossom--in short, one of the most vigorous and productive small gardens I have ever seen, with a quality of taste and colour unsurpassed. ""I make no claim to be a gardener, but I am a member of the Soil Association and interested in the organic methods and have seen enough to know that compost and straw mulch alone mixed with poor and sandy soil is not enough to account for the garden. There must be, I thought, a 'Factor X' to be taken into consideration. What was it? "After his tour around the garden Sir George was not going to accept our radio broadcast "compost and hard work" story. "I pressed Peter Caddy for his explanation. Here we have to take the plunge and what follows will appeal to some and be unacceptable to others." I told Sir George that "Factor X" was our cooperation with the devas and nature spirits. And he accepted it. "The ancients, of course, accepted the kingdom of nature spirits without question as a fact of direct vision and experience. The organs of perception of the super-sensible world have atrophied in modern man as part of the price to be paid for the evolving of the analytical scientific mind.""The nature spirits may be just as real as they ever were, though not to be perceived except by those who can redevelop the faculty to see and experience them.

Perhaps the phenomenon with which we are now concerned is simply one of many examples of a break-through from higher planes leading to new possibilities of creative cooperation. "Not only had Sir George accepted it, but he encouraged us to write about it, thus initiating the first edition of "The Findhorn Garden," a series of four booklets printed on our own hand-cranked machine. The memo Sir George had written to Lady Eve became the foreword: "As I see it, the implications are vast. The picture the devas give is that from their viewpoint the world situation is critical. The world of nature spirits is sick of the way man is treating the life forces. The devas and elementals are working with God's law in plant growth. Man is continually violating it." "There is real likelihood that they may even turn their back on man whom they sometimes consider to be a parasite on Earth. This could mean a withdrawal of life force from the plant forms, with obviously devastating results. ""Yet their wish is to work in cooperation with man, who has been given a divine task of tending the Earth. For generations man has ignored them and even denied their existence. Now a group of individuals consciously invite them into their garden. They are literally demonstrating that the desert can blossom as the rose." "They also show the astonishing pace at which this can be brought about. If this can be done so quickly at Findhorn, it can be done in the Sahara. If enough men could really begin to use this cooperation consciously, food could be grown in quantity on the most infertile areas. ""If Caddy's group have done it, many others can do so too. Wherever we are, we can invoke our devas, who doubtless are instantly in touch with those on the same wavelength anywhere else. This means that many gardeners can link up for help with centres like Findhorn where the break-through is conscious. ""The contact will not necessarily bring a scientific knowledge, though this may follow. It will work in the immediate intuition of the gardener so that his hunches may guide him to the right, though perhaps unorthodox, action. ""This is well demonstrated in Caddy's case, and many others who will acknowledge and love the nature spirits may, even if they are in no way sensitive, find that their gardens begin to grow and respond as never before and that they are led with surer intuition to do the right thing in planting and tending. ""The possibility of cooperation with the devas should be investigated seriously.

The time has come when this can be spoken of more openly. The phenomenon of a group of amateurs doing this forces it into our attention. Many people are now ready to understand, and that enough should understand and act on it is possibly of critical importance in the present world situation. "Judging by the response we received to these booklets, there was an increasing number of people "ready to understand." They sent letters thanking us for speaking openly about our work with the devas and nature spirits and telling us how this confirmed their own experiences.

Some responded out of interest in organic gardening, others related to the implications our experiments held for healing the planet, others to the spiritual aspects of our work. Findhorn was emerging into a public role. During Sir George's visit, we were in the process of planting nearly 600 beech trees as a hedge to enclose the area on which six new cedarwood bungalows had been erected. Our grounds now extended over nearly two acres. Paths were made through the sand, gravel and couch grass surrounding the bungalows. We planned to prepare this area and plant it with trees, shrubs and flowers. Although our soil was considered unsuitable for deciduous trees. Pan had promised his help and that of his subjects should we decide to grow them. Eileen had received in guidance that trees draw power down from the heavens and up from the earth and that we should grow a variety to attract the many different devas. About the middle of April I saw an advertisement in a Sunday paper with a special offer of large trees, suitable for gardens, from a nursery on the south coast of England. It seemed foolish to even consider buying these, because in this country deciduous trees should be planted by the end of March. I asked Eileen to check my inner prompting in guidance and we were told to go ahead and order them. We waited and waited, and finally they arrived at the end of May.

After ten days of transport by train, they were in a pitiful condition with shriveled leaves and roots. I truly wondered why we had been guided to get them. Getting no encouragement from the various gardeners I consulted, we went ahead and planted them in almost pure sand and in the teeth of a strong cold northeast wind. new trees, and all of us consciously gave them love and support. When Dorothy contacted the Landscape Angel for help, she was told: "We are including all these new trees and shrubs in a solid downpour of radiations, a wall of it, for they must indeed be stabilized and kept immersed in the life elements. They have to be kept in this wall without a moment's deviation; each one must be upheld the life in them is one with it. Give all your protective love to this wall, and let us thank God together. "Roc invoked the aid of the nature spirits who work with this energy from the devas. He could see gnomes and elves busy at work, particularly among the roots. The trees and shrubs survived and flourished. It seems we were guided to get them to show us that a seemingly impossible situation was possible with the help of the devas and nature spirits working through dedicated channels. Roc's work with the nature spirits also pointed out to us the importance of the wild garden. In Britain, where there is a tradition of fine gardens, almost invariably an area in each is left wild. There is also a folk custom among farmers of leaving a bit of land, where humans are forbidden to go, as the domain of the fairies and elves. One Sunday afternoon. Roc had accompanied a group of us on a visit to a local walled garden. At one end of the landscaped area ran a stream with a wooden bridge across it. On the other side was a wild place, cool and dense in contrast to the neat and colorful beds on our side. Roc, obeying an impulse, wandered off across the bridge and into the foliage. Later he told us that beyond a certain point in the area he had suddenly felt like an intruder. There Pan appeared beside him and told him that this part of the garden was for his subjects alone and was to be so respected. He said that in any garden, no matter the size, where the full cooperation of the nature spirits is desired a part should be left where, as far as possible, man does not enter.

The nature spirits use this place as a focal point for their activity, a center from which to work. Pan also told him that at Findhorn we did not have enough respect for our wild garden. Indeed, we had developed the habit of crossing this area when we went to the beach for a swim, and right in the middle of it Dennis had set up his tent. You can imagine how quicklyhe removed both himself and his gear on hearing this message! Thereafter, we made sure to enter this area as seldom as possible. Throughout 1968 the gardens surrounding the bungalows grew. So did the number of horticultural experts we attracted. Lady Eve Balfour had found Sir George's memorandum fascinating and passed it on to her sister. Lady Mary, who came that autumn to visit. Although she modestly describes herself as "an ordinary gardener of the organic school," Lady Mary has a store of knowledge acquired through many years of study and collaboration with her sister in agricultural research experiments carried out on their farm. As we walked about the gardens together, despite her desire to rationally explain away what she saw, she was thoroughly impressed and, as she wrote, "I stared in a kind of rapturous wonder at the compact mass of colour and form." Her report goes on to say: "The impression uppermost in my mind is that something important is happening here at Findhorn something strange and wonderful, hopefully not unique. Gardens like this are needed the world over, desperately needed where deserts flourish and life dies. Life! Perhaps that's it! Yes, if I were asked to describe the Findhorn garden in one word, I would answer 'life.' Life abounding. "On Lady Eve's recommendation, Professor R. Lindsay Robb, consultant to the Soil Association, arrived in early 1969. With a background in agriculture, conservation and nutrition, Professor Robb had served as a consultant in various posts around the world, including the United Nations mission to Costa Rica.

He clearly was a man with the wisdom as well as the knowledge of the land. As Lady Eve wrote of him, he expressed "not only love for, but a profound understanding of all forms of life, from human beings and what makes them tick, to the myriad microscopic beings whose home is the soil. "Roc and I took Lindsay around the garden. He kept picking up the powdery soil, looking at the partially broken down compost on it and exclaiming in amazement that things shouldn't be growing here at all. After his tour, he wrote: "The vigour, health and bloom of the plants in this garden at midwinter on land which is almost barren powdery sand cannot be explained by the moderate dressings of compost, nor indeed by the application of any known cultural methods of organic husbandry. There are other factors and they are vital ones."

Living as this group is living, on the land, by the land and for the love of the land, is the practical expression of a philosophy which could be the supreme form of wisdom--and freedom. "When Lindsay Robb left, he sent up his friend and colleague, Donald Wilson, founder-secretary of the Soil Association, manager of an organic foods distribution center in London and an expert on compost. Donald was amazed by the quality and size of our produce, but our compost, he felt, left much to be desired. He dug right in with pitchfork and hard-core technical knowledge, backed by years of Soil Association research. His two-week visit left us with our first thirty-five-ton compost heap. Our association with him pointed out how Findhorn's knowledge could be blended with established organic gardening techniques for mutual enrichment. Donald showed us the techniques, and the devas through Dorothy answered questions he had pondered for years. Before leaving, he put in a special request to the de vas to get the new compost heap steaming. A few days later the Landscape Angel told us: Yes, we have a/ready begun working on the compost heap in response to Donald's request. Rejoice, a great new surge forward can be taken with the garden as the wholeness of life is more and more recognized and you work on the positive side and not through the negative way of destroying. Give many thanks, as we do. Donald's emphasis on creating healthy soil abundant in life, rather than concentrating on what should be done about pests and disease, supported what we had several years before received from the de vas and gave us all a fresh look at how we were putting this knowledge into practice. With all visitors coming to Find horn there was this kind of give and take: our technical knowledge was broadened, their spiritual horizons were extended.

To some we represented the fulfillment of a vision. Richard St. Barbie Baker, founder of the Society of the Men of the Trees, paid us a visit to find that his "dream for a caravan community has already been realized. It is indeed an oasis in what was once an inhospitable area of sand dunes." Having dedicated himself for over fifty years to active cooperation between man and nature to reclaim the deserts of the world through planting trees, St. Barbie saw in our gardens a living promise of success for his work. St. Barbie Baker is one of the most dedicated and untiring people I have ever met. Nothing seems to stop him: among other accomplishments, he initiated the Forestry Commission in Britain while pursuing higher studies in forestry at Cambridge; brought together, in 1929, the traditionally antagonistic religious heads in Palestine to discuss the future of tree-planting in the Holy Land; drafted the plan for the Civilian Conservation Corps with Franklin D. Roosevelt; organized the countries bordering the Sahara in a cooperative effort to reclaim that vast desert. He has totally given his life to heal the Earth.

During his first visit to Find horn, St. Barbie Baker, known, in fact, as the "Man of the Trees," drew up a complete plan for the care and landscaping of the trees in our garden. Since we were still in the process of compiling and publishing our four-part garden story, we asked him to write the foreword to the section on messages from the tree de vas. He wrote: "The messages from tree de vas through Dorothy reveal the occult explanation that scientific research has been unable to give. The ancients believed that the Earth itself is a sentient being and feels the behavior of mankind upon it. I submit that we accept this and behave accordingly, and thus open up for ourselves a new world of understanding. ""How dull life would be if we did not accept anything we could not explain. Think of the miracle of sunrise and sunset in the Sahara; the miracle of growth from the tiny germinating seed to the forest giant, a veritable citadel in itself providing food and shelter for myriads of tiny things, and an indispensable link in the nature cycle, giving the breath of life to man. "The devas, of course, love St. Barbe Baker. During his visit the Leylands Cypress Deva told us: "There is high rejoicing in our kingdoms as the Man of the Trees, so beloved of us, links with you here. Is it not an example in your worlds that it is one world, one work, one cause under God being expressed through different channels?" "You understand better now why we have gone on and on about the need for trees on the surface of the Earth. Great forests must flourish and man must see to this if he wishes to continue to live on this planet. The knowledge of this necessity must become part of his consciousness; as much accepted as his need for water in order to live.

He needs trees just as much; the two are interlinked. We are, indeed, the skin of the Earth, and a skin not only covers and protects, but passes through it the vital forces of life. Nothing could be more vital to life as a whole than trees. "Clearly, we found support and understanding in each other. A phrase from a prayer by Richard St. Barbe Baker adequately expresses our mutual meeting ground: "Help us give our best to life and leave the Earth a little more beautiful for having lived on it." The Findhorn garden had demonstrated what could be done by man working hand-in-hand with the devas and nature spirits. Now we had the acceptance and support of others with more technical knowledge. Just at this time new lessons began coming our way. My pledge to seek cooperation and brother hood with the nature forces was sincere, but I found it was not always easy to carry out in practice. The problem was to differentiate between the traditional gardening practices that took the devic and elemental kingdoms into account and those that simply exploited them. The decision rested squarely on my shoulders. I had been given the authority, as man, to act in the garden. Though occasionally I slipped, I was told: As long as you make consistent steps toward change on behalf of man, mistakes in the moment will be overlooked and balanced out. My experience in dealing with the delicate sweet peas was a perfect example of the type of challenge I had to confront.

As a child I had watched my father grow sweet peas in the traditional manner, allowing only one main stem from each plant to grow, pinching out all other stems. Flowers were permitted to bloom only when a single strong stem had grown with no tendrils or side shoots. The result was a long-stemmed sweet pea with four or five large blooms. To me this was the standard for sweet pea beauty. Thus, when Eileen asked me to grow sweet peas for the two tall vases in the community sanctuary, I knew how to go about getting the most beautiful sweet peas possible. These were after all for the glory of God, not man. I grew these plants as I had learned, but also with much love. Each day I talked to the sweet peas, telling them how lovely they were and what magnificent sweet pea blossoms they were growing while I pinched off their tendrils and sideshoots. Dorothy, of course, wasn't happy about this. Nor was Roc, who felt it was clearly manipulation. This was all very frustrating and even infuriating. Gardening to me had meant pinching out, pruning, weeding, thinning and otherwise creating the conditions that would give the plants we had brought into our garden a chance to grow and be fruitful. In the natural environment of a field or forest, a bush is pruned by animals eating back the growth, and I felt that in a garden man could take the place of nature and do the same. Besides, without pruning, fruit trees and bushes can't bear fruit, and cultivated roses can't give those beautiful blossoms. That's just fact. In order to create, one must, in a sense, destroy as well. Were the nature kingdoms telling me to stop tending the garden? I just couldn't see an alternative. Attempting to settle the controversy, Dorothy contacted the Sweet Pea Deva. She received a very straightforward message, emphasizing the natural beauty of the sweet pea. However, the deva presented to us a way of bringing about change in the form of plants without causing harm... through cooperation with the inner spirit of the plant, rather than manipulation of the outer form. Again we were being told to look to the creative power of our thoughts. We were told to ask the nature kingdoms, in faith, for the change we wanted to initiate. Then, if our faith was strong enough and the change was clearly for the good of the whole, they would cooperate to bring it about.

However, the devas had said that we were just beginning to move into a new era of cooperation. In our garden, we were in the interim period of building a bridge to that new world. Therefore, I had to follow my inner feeling that it would not be right to suddenly drop all traditional gardening practices. This would lead to chaos. One builds the new by taking the best of the old and adding onto it. Moreover, we often did not have enough people or time--or indeed the necessary level of consciousness -- to do more than keep the garden well-tended. That was a big enough job in itself. Over and over we were reminded that in this garden of cooperation our aim is to work with the nature kingdoms in a balanced way, discovering plant forms that are expressive of both man and nature. As Lady Eve Balfour, in a letter to me, wrote: "Just as we have to learn to be aware that we occupy a physical form, so must we become aware that this is true of every life form. While we identify entities (plant, animal or man) with their forms, we will only be able to see God as divided against himself. But when we manage to reach communion with the reality behind the manifestation, we can, in cooperation, work out compromises for the forms, acceptable to all."

Perhaps, as part of this process, man must change his concept of beauty. But we must remember that the nature kingdom is evolving as well and is ready and willing to change, providing man's motive is in accord with the whole. In 1970 a young man, David Spangler, and his spiritual colleague Myrtle Glines came to Findhorn from America. For several years before that, David had been a lecturer and writer on New Age themes. When he arrived he found us to be a dozen or so people working in a garden and living a God-centered life. Within the following eighteen months community membership grew to 150. During David's three year stay our identity expanded into that of a New Age community and training center. His particular contacts with higher beings and his ability to clarify Findhorn's broader role helped to bring this about. The intense energy I had directed toward initiating and developing the garden now began to shift into administrative areas. While I remained responsible to the vision of cooperation, the actual physical work in the garden had been taken over by other members. Findhorn's focus now was the flowering of human consciousness. The lessons we had learned growing plants we now applied to growing the people who joined us. Our work in the garden had deeply rooted the energies of love and light in the very soil of Findhorn. The forces of nature had been our teachers, providing us with physical and spiritual nourishment. Just as in the evolution of the planet, plants had provided the environment that made it possible for man to develop, each of the plants we had been guided to grow here contributed its energies toward creating the proper environment for Findhorn's greater work: the transformation of the human soul. Indeed, the growth of the garden is symbolic of the growth of the soul. The proper environment must be created, weeds that might choke out the finer, more delicate qualities of the soul must be removed, and all actions must be guided by the love that fulfills all laws. Just as you can create conditions for insuring the growth of plants, so the quality of life within the Findhorn community can be likened to a greenhouse environment where the growth and transformation of each individual is stepped up.

In the beginning, while we were in the midst of establishing the garden, we could not see what it was moving toward. Thus, we had to live in the moment with faith in God's guidance. Now, looking back, a clear pattern and plan can be discerned, each apparent challenge seen as teaching the perfect lesson. A man quite untutored in the techniques of gardening was placed in this unpromising terrain and challenged to create a garden. He was provided with all the necessary channels and situations necessary to revive in him the spirit of true cooperation with nature, under the guidance of the God within. garden vegetable kingdom universe

And the garden grew. Much has been demonstrated at Findhorn of what can be done in a spirit of cooperation between man and nature. There is so much we have yet to do. In the new phase of experimentation we are moving into in the garden, we must begin to live more fully what we have been given. Some of the directives we have received present great challenges, but we know we must proceed as we have always done, step-by-step, in faith that we are revealing the oneness of all life.

Perhaps in these pages you have discovered ways to make your own sandy places bloom with new life and to enter more fully into the cosmic adventure of living.

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