Without the herbs and plants that grow around us our habitat and environment would feel lifeless and

somehow incomplete.  The fact is it is the plants that have created the environment in which we the animals

can survive and go about our ecological function.  How can we not see this as the greatest life giving act of

generosity!? The fact that we don’t see it this way has so much to do with how we’ve been educated in a

reductionist system where everything is broken down into parts so that we can study the whole.

For me this can never achieve its goal.  If you take anything alive apart how can you expect its living

essence to remain intact! The same can be said of nature and plants. No amount of laboratory work or

microscope analysis will ever find the part of the Rose that imbues on the eyes of the beholder the sense of

joy or marvel. The healing one receives can be so profound from even being in the presence of a plant that

it can’t be dismissed or denied nor can its secret be found under the gaze of linear thinking.  The truth,

magic and healing remains in the whole.  This being true when we separate ourselves from nature and the

living web then we to lose something vital in ourselves, instead something living in us begins to fade and

decay and can only be nourished and fed from the living earth, gaia and the elements. This is

the case for all our relationships.

In the same way a gardener needs to garden, I need to work with the direct healing energy of plants and as

a human I need to be in touch with my ‘being’.  Nature isn’t something that we just sit and observe, it is

something we need to experience and be part of all the days of our lives. The act of learning in life is the

act of doing or experiencing.