"Gardening is a healing art," writes Marilyn Barrett in Creating Eden: The Garden as a Healing Space. In this helpful and hopeful resource, the author, who is a psychotherapist and photographer, shares the pleasures of tending her garden. While she is digging around in the ground, her senses spring to life. She also savors the solitude there and the sense of being in control. As she handles the different phases of gardening such as planting, watering, weeding, pruning, and controlling pests, the author reflects upon the way her own personality shows up in these tasks. "Planting a garden is an act of optimism," Barrett notes. "When you plant a seed, you put hope in the ground. Your trust is in the future when there is no present sign that life will come."
Gardening can be a spiritual teacher with worthwhile lessons about patience, hard choices, overcoming obstacles, and personal renewal. As we tend our gardens, we are nourishing our souls in a greater appreciation of the abundance of life. Creating Eden is just the right book for those who want some bloom in their lives during the long hot summer.