Translator: Laurelle Walsh Reviewer: Denise RQ
I invite you to fall in love with nature.
We need a new story.
We need a story of intimacy and love.
A story of care. A story of connection.
For me, putting my hands in the dirt,
and planting seeds, and seeing them grow,
has been the story of intimacy with the natural world.
I am a lover. I love the Earth.
All my life, since I was a little girl,
I've been into gardens.
Gardens have led me all over the world.
I like the wild and the cultivated together.
Like a person, like a child, like your imagination,
not all contained.
When I was a little girl growing up in Northern California,
I got to play in the wild hills and just roam.
That initiated me into the spirit of land.
I used to steal little old ladies' flowers,
and to save them, they invited me into their gardens
and taught me how to plant.
(Laughter)
They gave me my first rose bush
so I could make tiny little fairy crowns
for the fairies I believed in.
Later, when I was in high school,
I was invited to be an exchange student in Kyoto, Japan.
And there, I recognized sacred space.
Gardens that were, like this one, 800 years old:
the Moss Temple, Kokedera,
tended lovingly as a sacred act
to take care of gardens.
I like to visualize a garden at least 100 years not a few months.
The next year, when I was 18,
I left Marin County to go to Maine,
to put my hands in the dirt, my knees on the soil,
and plant my own garden, to live off the land.
Doing that taught me an intimacy,
taught me how my food is,
taught me to rely on it.
We made compost like alchemists make gold.
It was magic; all of you gardeners know that.
We need to take care of our soil.
I realized soil and soul are connected.
I went through a very devastating personal loss.
I felt like laying down on the earth and being covered with soil.
But instead, I decided to plant seeds
and visualize walking among flowers.
I went to Europe,
and I fell in love with Monet's garden.
I went to 11 countries, looking at all these gardens,
but when I got there, it was wild, and exuberant, and overgrown.
It was late September of 1984,
and I thought, "This is where my spirit really fills the space."
The roses were up on arches,
and when I looked up, I was connected to the heavens.
At the water garden, when I looked down,
I was in reflection, personal reflection.
The dahlias and the asters towered above me.
I wasn't important; it was all about the garden.
And then going over to the Japanese garden,
the water garden, with the arched bridge,
and the boat, and the water lilies,
I felt like I was in Japan.
I felt the tranquility and peace.
I also felt the spirit of the place. I felt Monet's spirit.
And I thought, "I want to know this."
"I want to make a relationship with this garden."
A garden takes time. You've got to work it.
My friend said,
"Well why don't you spend the night, and you can come back tomorrow?"
I said, "No. I have to work here."
I went home to Carmel.
I was a gardener with nine people working for me,
quit my job - I quit my day job -
and I went over to France.
I didn't know French, had to study French really quick for two months.
Arrived, and it was the worst winter they'd ever had.
All these plants were dead.
They'd never had a woman gardener before,
and they didn't particularly welcome me.
But I was forming a relationship with that land and that place.
My first job, to prove myself,
was to prune Monet's favorite rose.
Two stories high, 80 feet wide,
"The Mermaid,"
and it has big huge thorns in it.
I pruned it; afterwards, I had this big pile of canes.
And I realized I was visualizing the growth for that plant,
but I was also cutting out the dead wood of my life.
I was visualizing my new bloom, as well.
A garden is like a bridge.
It can connect us to intimacy with the natural world.
We can also co-create.
We can visualize. We can be present.
It can be a spiritual act. It can be a radical act.
To grow your own food is pretty darned radical.
It's a place of reflection.
For Monet it was the greatest form of his art.
He said if it weren't for flowers he would not have been a painter.
It was a place where he grew for 46 years,
the second half of his life,
and all his best work came from that.
There were times of great darkness
when he was living in his garden during World War I,
when his wife died, his son died,
many friends died; he had failing eyesight.
Failing eyesight for a painter.
He got very depressed.
He'd question his purpose for a living.
But the garden was his muse.
The beauty called him back.
The light asked him to paint it.
And he visualized these huge paintings that he gave as a gift
to hold the spirit of his country.
My husband made a great garden, bamboo gardens.
And when he died,
thousands of bamboo plants drooped;
they wilted; they were going into mourning.
Grief can freeze our hearts, it can numb us.
To get out of grief, to get reconnected to love,
reconnected to our heart,
I suggest putting our hands in the soil
and being connected with the seeds and our souls.
A completely different way of gardening was King Louis XV,
with his control, and power, and show of wealth in Versailles.
The Sun King wanted to show
that he was better than nature; he could control it.
Some people still believe that.
That's the old story.
No more chemicals, no more control of nature,
we're invited to be a part of it.
This is a couple of slides
that were supposed to be cut out from my trip to the Amazon.
(Laughter)
But here we are in my garden.
And my garden is a place
where I can have a relationship and intimacy with the plants.
But I have to say, I've been losing trees.
And last year I lost a beehive.
And I'm an organic gardener.
I know things are changing.
But I'm still in love.
I still go back to Monet's garden for 30 years to photograph it.
I love bulbs because they show me the life-death-life cycle.
And I want to welcome you, invite you,
to unplug, to disconnect from our heavy technological world
where we spend all this time on computers.
And just take some time out and walk outside.
Go to the beach. Put your hands in the soil.
Play with some children. Grow some of your own food.
Reconnect in a full-hearted, loving way with nature.
Bring some children in.
Children to play in your garden, a community garden, at the park.
Teach them about the magic of a dormant plant coming into full bloom,
or a little seed that can sweeten into your own tomato plant.
To use your imagination and creativity with the garden.
Fall in love. Reconnect. Be present in it.
Put your hands in the soil.
That's the new Prozac, by the way,
when you put your hands in the soil it gives you happiness.
We have to connect back in order not to be depressed,
in order to heal ourselves, and heal our planet.
So I invite you to embrace the beauty of a garden,
to know, to fall in love again.
Because what we love, we protect.
And all true love is a collaboration.
Thank you.
(Applause)