Welcome to the Seed of Life Garden
A Self-Sufficiency Start-up Garden
which grows into an abundance garden
by its very nature.

The Seed of Life Garden Story

The evolutionary process through which the Seed of Life Garden unfolds continues to intrigue and engage me. So far, the Garden and I have moved through three distinct stages of this evolution, which I name the Pattern, the Quantum Leap, and the Good Clean Dirty Work.

The Pattern is the core of the garden, the Quantum Leap is the great "Aha!" that blows life into it, and the Good Clean Dirty Work is the action involved in creating it and maintaining it. I am coming to believe that this type of evolutionary process is indicative of the "Shift in Consciousness" that keeps whispering through the coffee shacks, music bars, and ivy leagues of our times. The "Shift" itself is a transition from linear thinking to an interrelated technique of arriving at an answer.

The Pattern grew out of my attempt to create a final project for a course of study in medicinal herbs. I told my classmates that I would design a ‘healing garden' but no matter how hard I thought or how long I procrastinated, I could not produce a design. Finally, I modified a technique the school taught: we had been dialoguing with the basic intelligence of the plants themselves, and I chose to address the basic intelligence of Healing Gardens, itself. I closed my books, raised my voice, and asked aloud for what I wanted...

"I open a coning between my higher self and the over-lighting Deva of Healing Gardens. I give thanks in advance for being shown a garden design which will help heal people."

Perhaps three minutes passed, it feels like much less. I remember being surprised by my own assurance that this was going to work. Then, there it was! A six-petal flower shape with four concentric rings overlaying it. It was so simple. I grabbed a compass and drew what I had seen in my ‘mind's eye'. I colored in half the spaces designating them walking areas and filled in the rest with medicinal plants such as Echinacea purpurea and Leonarus cardiaca. The Pattern completed the class requirements that earned me a certificate as an "Herbal Educator".

The Good Clean Dirty Work actually began when my housemate and I decided to utilize the pile of abandoned bricks and laid the hardscape portion of the Pattern. First, we took a piece of string and a bag of flour and created a large compass. Second, we drew the Pattern on the ground using a radius that fit the space. The concentric rings were laid to please our eye. Thirdly, we bricked in the areas that I had designated as walking areas. Once the contrast between bare earth and brick was established the Pattern really had presence. We manifested our fence by offering suburbanites the free service of removing tree stakes from their beloved strangled lone lawn tree or hauling off their discarded wire fencing pieces. Like magic we had a fenced in garden with a recycled gate.

The weeds wrangled for our attention in the space between the Pattern and the fence. We piled truckloads of newspaper in thick layers on top of them. Woodchip piles dropped by tree companies for the public to use provided free mulch for covering all the newspaper /weed barrier. The work was clean and dirty but it was yet to be so good...

It was about a year later when the Pattern made a quantum leap. I was attending a Bioneers conference in the Bay Area. A couple of women were running a booth that sported a poster they had created featuring the six-petal flower Pattern unfolding into a lotus blossom of color. The concentric rings were unique to the Garden but the floral shape was identical. I said "Hey, that's the same pattern as this garden design I know." They said...

"That's the Seed of Life, Honey. It's the Heart of the Lotus Blossom that Buddha was meditating upon when he reached enlightenment. It's a Pattern recognized by the ancients as a symbol of creation."

The same pattern apparently appears on the walls of the ancient pyramids. It is also a cross-sectional diagram of a particle moving through time and space ~ a picture of the genesis pattern of motion itself. A particle spins, and after the initial rotation the center of the circle moves to the circumference and casts another identical circle. Then the center of the spin moves to where the circumfrences of the first two circles intersect in a clockwise fashion. The process is duplicated again and again and in this way a cycle is completed which involves seven spins. If we could see the path that that particle had traveled, we would see a six-petaled flower pattern. The Pattern is a record of the relationship that emerges spontaneously from movement. The geometry diagrams the relationship patterns that are themselves the building blocks of Life.

When the Bioneers conference ended and I returned home, I looked at the Pattern with fresh eyes and it changed. I saw the concentric rings again for the first time. As parts of a Seed of Life Garden they revealed themselves from center to circumference as a ring of flowers, a ring of culinary plants, a ring of medicinal herbs, and a ring of food. Both beautiful and functional, the design created a place where humans could be in relationship with each of the four essential plant genres that we depend upon to live. The design is a SEED itself ~ the Seed of a design which grows. A Self-Sufficiency Seed Garden Design that can be any size initially for it has within it an inherent growth pattern. As one's interest and experience grows or additional people contribute, so too grows the design. It grows like a blossom opening, creating larger and larger planting beds and walking areas, which stay true to the core pattern. The Quantum Leap allowed me to see the Pattern as a functional tool with a specific use and an obvious methodology for implementation. History and consciousness blew life into it. When people undergo the transformation from living as a consumer to being a sustainable member of society, this Garden gives them a place to begin that is not overwhelming.

The Quantum Leap remotivated me and transformed my vision of the Garden. The process of amending the soil with lime and phosphate, chicken manure and compost, kelp and a little bit of wood ash was done systematically from the inner ring to the outer ring in a clockwise direction one bed at a time. Most of these amendments and the plants (as seeds or starts) were purchased but the labor was all volunteered. I found myself unusually enthused regarding worms and worm poop.

The Seed of Life Garden creates a strong image visually. It is an organic pattern that we can interact with personally, utilize as a tool to teach or practice horticultural therapy, and to reorganize our communities. I arranged the plants in the rings with the intention of supporting the geometry of the Seed of Life garden as an aesthetic statement. When working in the garden I tend to complete cycles of chores because of the delight enjoyed when the pattern is whole. You can feel that the garden has an inclination to grow because it responds with abundance. I have enough extra plants already to start another garden. Meeting the opportunity that abundance provides is an issue of daily discipline, yet it is this interaction, which infuses the whole process with meaning as it lifts the veil between the mundane and the profound. It puts the "Good" into the Clean Dirty Work.

In this way, the initial question of how to help people heal transformed into a methodology for reorienting people towards a state of self-sufficiency. A question became a tool. It was a three-stage process that included acquiring the Pattern, allowing the history of the pattern to provide a Quantum Leap, and consistently getting down to the Good Clean Dirty Work of the world. An unconventional approach to be sure yet the results stand under scrutiny.