November 19-21, 2004
Imagine getting home after a long day and tuning into a bird’s call or a flash of color that draws you into your garden. The sweet fragrance and exquisite patterns begin to soothe you. You take a deep breath and notice the play of sun and shade all around you. Soft, harmonious sounds of water soothe you and you settle into a gentle peace.
Our gardens can reflect and enhance our spiritual lives, offering possibilities for uplift, healing, and renewal. The sacred spaces we create connect us to the earth’s healing energy. Designing our own landscape aligns us with nature and enhances our personal discovery. As we learn to play in the garden, the work becomes a joyful, creative, and even divine process. Tap into your imagination, connect with the beauty of nature, and leave with the inspiration to create, or enhance, your own garden.
Our personal journey of discovery will begin with a journey through the labyrinth, music to open you, and exercises to stimulate your imagination. We’ll find the spirit in ourselves and our land. We’ll experience archetypal spaces and learn to find and enhance them at home.
Traditions from gardens around the world will be explored to find ideas to be integrated into our own gardens. We’ll find the plants and forms to create beautiful personal, transcendent spaces. A series of talks and visual, oral, tactile, movement, and sound exercises will guide us into the process of creating sacred, healing, or contemplative gardens, expanding our horizons and providing us with a framework and tools to develop our plans.
Mary Dewart has been a landscape designer who has been creating garden spaces for over 15 years. She’s taught horticulture and design classes for the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, where she helps gardeners expand their connection with nature, their gardens, and themselves. A lifelong gardener, naturalist, and adventurer, she’s also an environmental activist and advocate for preserving historic landscapes.
Maria von Brincken has been designing and creating award-winning horticultural experiences for over two decades featuring compositions of color, form, texture, and bloom sequences. Trained as a fine artist, color theorist, and graphic designer, she weaves values and dreams into garden tapestries that evoke our better selves.
Prue Berry is a warm-hearted and goodhumored earth-enthusiast who co-directed RC&CC for 17 years and hosts most Rowe weekends as Director Emerita. In her business, Sacred Spaces, she goes to people’s homes, shares their longings, and offers them tangible plans for bringing more beauty into their lives, homes, gardens, and hearts.
Marty Cain, an artist, teacher, dowser and geomancer, was taught to dowse by her Lithuanian grandfather. She’s visited hundreds of ancient, sacred sites in England and Europe and teaches dowsing as a way to touch that part of you that generates creative ideas. She’s created over 100 labyrinths, and she longs to create new sacred sites that heal the Earth and all who enter them. A wonderful energy abides with these women when they get together, and their enthusiasm is contagious.