Spirit of the Garden

When I penned the first draft for my forthcoming publication ‘Spirit of a Place’ I did so sitting at a table on the veranda of a villa overlooking the Pai River in Thailand and the mist covered mountains beyond. The scene was provoking, and I realised the character I was writing about had to take another journey.
I decided he needed to go into the garden in a special way for my character is a landscape architect and had become lost in his ways. He was a traditional architect seeing the landscape as something of opportunities and constraints and responding to his client’s needs; something rather traditional and sterile and separate from the innate character of the landscape. He was missing something so essential, and that is ‘connectedness’.
I wanted to make my character different. I wanted him to become connected to the spirits of the land. His journey had been convoluted and perplexed because he couldn’t work out in his mind just what is a spirit. He knew they existed but how do we connect with them?
Realisations from his journey and travels to places like Turkey, Sri Lanka, Japan, Bali, and in particular, Myanmar; suggested the spirits of a place lay within the land itself. The land is the spirit became his discovery, a finding very ancient in its origins and made special by ancient cultures so long ago. My character realising here he was in the present time and discovering something ancient people held great respect for. They were able to connect with their surroundings in a very holistic manner.
A discovery for him perhaps, but how does a landscape architect who’s separated, alone and lost in direction, change his life to move forward with this new revelation enveloping his mind? He decided on the veranda of the villa at Pai, it lay in designing gardens for people who believed in the spirits of a place; especially their garden, and Wil (the character in the book) finding a direction in life, and doing them.
He felt the spirits of a garden come across in many ways, through that of Yin and Yang, Chi or Qi presence and its accumulation. He thought about entering the garden to create the scene and home for those spirits. For example, locating somewhere within a garden a garden seat so its occupant could connect with them. Realising spirits dance with the shadows of light and shade, they flow with a breeze or rain, come to us through the sound of a bird or the fragrance and colour of a flower. They were all of the land itself. The land harbours its spirits, they welcome or suppressive, enchanting or disruptive, whatever, but the more pleasant a place became, its spirits were content.
My character realised there was an inner glow that came from a spirit as it transcended into the mind as something to connect with. How to find it is so difficult and obscure. Maybe they lie within the mind waiting to be discovered or released so they can move out onto the landscape or surroundings and we attaching with them. The spirits of the land themselves waiting for someone like us to come and join with them. I’m sure birds, animals and plants or anything of life join with them. For they are guiding the relationship and behaviour of all things, all’s well or not.
The garden itself, whatever style, shape and configuration, location and climate all impact on our sensory perception of sight, sounds, scent, touch and taste; coming to us as we meet with them. Are these reactions and intimacy just a chance thing or do they guide us potentially towards a garden’s spirits, a gardens deeper glow? There isn’t ever likely to be a true answer and the garden’s spirits remain as they are.
I hope you enjoy the experience of reading ‘Spirit of a Garden’ as much as Wil (my character) had creating it.