Bless Your Garden

As many of us turn our thoughts to growing something beautiful or edible–or both!–in our gardens, it can be sweet to do a simple ceremony to help us connect with the unquenchable forces of life in the garden, and to celebrate its power to grow what we need.

Here are a few inspiring suggestions to help you devise the garden blessing that is right for you. You can even do a blessing for a windowbox or container garden!

Choose any of these options, or meld them to create your own individual garden blessing.

1. Stand silently for a minute or two. Consciously bless the day, your fellow gardeners, if any, the nature kingdoms and the day’s work. Become aware of individual energies blending with the energies of everyone and everything in the environment at that moment. Reflect on the idea that in the unity of life, spirit and matter are both divine. It is your responsibility to nurture the spirit and form of the plants in your garden. Think of you and your garden in loving partnership. Give thanks to the One.

2. Sprinkle a tiny bit of tobacco or cornmeal in each of the four directions in your garden, thanking that direction for its teachings. Thank the life force of the Great Mystery as it manifests in this patch of earth. Place yourself in service to the Mystery and to the garden, so that together you may grow fertile, beautiful crops and flowers.

3. Plant a small crystal and a strand of your hair in each corner of your garden, pledging yourself to anticipating your garden’s needs for water, food, and care.

4. Make up a short prayer, such as: “Blessings on you, hopeful garden, with your earthy strength and power. May all that grows here be of benefit. May I serve you with an open heart. So be it.” Or read a poem or prayer aloud (There are many wonderful garden poems and prayers in the anthology Earth Prayers, edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon). Or sing a short song.

5. Stand barefoot beside your garden and feel the solidity of the earth. Think of the minerals your body shares with the earth. Now connect with the air that flows into and out of your lungs, keeping you alive. Think of the oxygen produced by the green plants that you breathe in, and the carbon dioxide you exhale that they breathe in. Think of the fluids flowing through your body–the blood, the tears, the sweat–and the rain that will bring life to your garden and whose moisture is so like your own. And think of the warmth of the sun that encourages your garden to grow, echoed in your own self by your energy and the heat of your aliveness. Love the garden, love your body, love the universe.

Read more: Self-Help, Spirit

Inspired by The Findhorn Garden, by the Findhorn Community (Findhorn Press, 1975). Copyright (c) 1975 by the Findhorn Community. Reprinted by permission of Findhorn Press.
Inspired by The Findhorn Garden, by the Findhorn Community (Findhorn Press, 1975).

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Prochi T.

1:35PM PDT on Jul 14, 2011

Gardens are a pleasure and what a good idea to Bless them. i will too.

send a green star

Robert O.

12:41AM PDT on Apr 27, 2011

Thanks.

SuS NoMail Plez P.

12:06AM PDT on Oct 14, 2010

Mare~ I admire and love your post. I as well study with a Cherokee Woman. I have never felt more connected to my true SELF than when I met this lovely woman. It was as if I UNDERSTOOD WHAT I HAD BEEN Searching for my ENTIRE LIFE. Wado Unali!

11:58PM PDT on Oct 13, 2010

TY Dear Wise Annie. I couldn't imagine not BLESSING my Garden each and everyday. Giving Respect and Love...REVERANCE for it's Bounty.

Peter B.

5:38AM PDT on Aug 12, 2010

Love my garden.Thankyou for shareing Annie

Past Member .

4:23PM PDT on Jul 4, 2010

Thanks for the ideas! I've been searching for new ways to bless my garden.

Philippa P.

11:24PM PDT on Jun 27, 2010

Teresa P.

2:58PM PDT on Jun 19, 2010

I never thought to bless my garden before. Thank You!

Mare C.

7:31PM PST on Feb 27, 2008

I study with a Cherokee Medicine Woman and she has taught me to call out to Creator and Earth Mother to open up my garden in the spring and then close it down in the fall. She calls it 'connecting' with them. Then I go around all my beds in a clockwise manner and scatter sacred tobacco (that I grow) in the beds to bless them and thank them and the energies that support my garden. It's truly a spiritual experience doing this. Plus it has gotten to the point that if I don't do it, the energy in my gardens just does not feel right. To boot, there is now a corner of my garden where I can only grow the tobacco. Nothing else will grow there. But I completely recognize that I'm in relationship with all that grows there, and surrender them to that bed. (I've written about the 'connecting' exercise in my first book.)

Ronanki G.

11:04PM PDT on Aug 11, 2007

it is great and inspiring we never knew that we should bless garden, i will start doing it and thanks for the site to give the direction