Gardens and Healing - Dorothy Bowhay

There is no doubt at all that gardens have a healing influence that is all their own. To begin with, they are open to the sky, and through them blows the sweet air shut out from stuffy houses, the smell of grass, and the varied scents of flowers.

There is perennial growth in gardens, and ‘the sight of things in bloom’. All gardens are alive with growth, even throughout the winter, although they rest then, to conserve their sweetness, and their strengthening powers, for future summer days.

I expect most people have heard, and remember, the well-known lines:

The kiss of the sun for pardon, The song of the birds for mirth; You are nearer God’s heart in a garden,Than anywhere else on earth.

Nearer God’s heart – the very heart of healing; from whom, for ever, all compassion flows. Nearer the heart of music that is Nature: beneath the warming sun whose rays give life.

It is well-known that green is a soothing color, and that chlorophyll, the green substance that is found in plants, is a curative agent (which can also be obtained from herbalists made up as a tonic).

© "Wake Up India" (January-March 2004) is the journal of the ‘New Life for India Movement’, published by The Theosophical Society, Adyar, Chennai 600 020. Website:www.ts-adyar.org. Reprinted with permission.

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