Friends of Park Garden - A world I didn’t know I was missing
Written by Mathijs Mulder-Barge
Everyone is drawn to the Findhorn Ecovillage for their own curious reasons. Living here offers a sense of community, spiritual nourishment and a deep connection to nature. For me, the last one has been especially significant. Writing this, I wonder what it was like for you, but I did not grow up with an awareness of nature.
Co-creation with nature, in its most natural form.
I have been on a spiritual journey for many years, and I have always appreciated nature. But from a distance. Conceptually knowing we are connected, without really experiencing it. That shift, from nature as a place I visited to nature as something I am a part of, deepened when I moved to Findhorn. Driven by my own curiosity, and especially by my son Suriël's love for nature, I find myself opening up to a magical world I did not know I had been missing.
Finding the Friends of Park Garden
A moment in the garden for Mathijs and Suriël. This is what the tea break looks like.
There are so many ways to connect with nature here, living at the edge of the Hinterland Forest with so many profound gardeners around. And a few months ago, Suriël and I found the Friends of Park Garden.
This initiative in the Park Ecovillage happens every Tuesday and Thursday morning and Wednesday afternoon. It is a simple concept, but guided with love by Elisabeth, Angus, Yuko and Peter, it has created a remarkable space to come together, tend to the gardens and connect to the nature realms.
Each day begins with an attunement, and then a wonderful group of volunteers sets out to make a corner of the ecovillage a little more beautiful, showing up with care and presence. A tea break in the middle allows deepening of connection. Together it becomes an embodied practice of community, of work as love in action, and of genuine connection to nature.
What the garden is teaching us
Suriël and I have learned so much. About plants and weeds and seasons. Sweeping leaves, trimming trees, weeding, weeding and weeding, tending to multiple gardens. Suriël always shows up with a smile and loves to connect with everyone around him. And slowly, we are both learning what it means to show up and work from love, and to make the world a nicer place, one small patch at a time.
Suriël at the gate of the Park Garden on a Tuesday morning.
Come and experience it yourself
The Friends of Park Garden is open to everyone living in the Park. And if you are visiting Findhorn, you are warmly invited to join. It is woven into two of the Findhorn Foundation's programmes: the Experience Week: From I to We and The Findhorn Garden. Both offer a doorway into this way of living, not as a concept to understand but as something you actually get to feel.
The Moontree building in the Park Ecovillage. This is where we meet for our attunements and tea breaks.
