Sanctuary Garden Entrance

The Sanctuary Garden: Creating a Place of Refuge in Your Yard or Garden

The Entrance

A garden which can only be reached through a series of outer gardens keeps its secrecy."
Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language

The secret of a sanctuary garden lies in part in its mystery, and this mystery must be accessed at a special point and in a special way - The Entrance. The entrance to a sanctuary garden can be one of its most powerful features. It is more than a location. The entrance is an opportunity to check-in with your soul - the need for sanctuary, the willingness to surrender worldly cares, the consideration of properly humble, appreciative, and reverent behavior.

Thomas Moore, in his inspiring book, The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life, reminds us, "Entering a garden is like passing through a mystical gate. Things are not the same on the other side." What if we treated our garden's entrance as if it too were a garden, a type of outer garden that keeps the rest of the sanctuary garden veiled and just out of full view - mysteriously?
Truly, if your garden is a sacred place in your life, it is deserving of a thoughtfully designed entrance. Your sanctuary garden proper may even be seen as a type of inner sanctum to be accessed by passages and levels - a series of outer gardens. The entrance and its accompanying threshold, therefore, is one such space that, as you pass through it, gradually intensifies and converges on the garden site. Like a gracious host anticipating your arrival the entrance is where the garden befriends you, allowing you to enter.

Many gardens do not have a formal entrance or even a gate. In fact my first gardens did not have a proper entrance. Why? Probably because for all those years, a garden, after all, was more a kind of outdoor pantry than anything else. It was purely a practical endeavor. As I travel and consult with others who are wanting advice or direction in planning their garden, I am not surprised to hear similiar views which reflect my own experience. Now, however, when a person asks me where to begin in seeking sanctuary in their yard or garden, I suggest the creation of an entrance - a specific spot that you pass through as if it were a veil that separates your refuge from the hubbub of the world.

Although over the years I was slowly beginning to discover my own brand of gardening theology, the sacredness of gardens and gardening had not yet occurred to me. Therefore, I entered each of my gardens wherever, whenever convenience dictated: precisely at the row in which I would be weeding or planting or watering. Simple as that.

I never lived in any one place for more than a gardening season or two. So my gardens were only brief waysides. I did not develop that deeper sense of rootedness and connection to place that might have inspired in me an art more reverent than the mere shaping of planting beds, and carving out straight paths that marked the quickest way from point A to point B. Now, however, I feel differently.

When you are ready to create a special place - your sanctuary garden -you suddenly notice subtle details that never before seemed important. You discover the marvelous interconnectedness of rocks and plants, color and lighting, water and wind sounds and wildlife. The Earth calls out to you for partnership in a way you have never experienced. Don't let an opportunity like this go by. Much as I have entered into a devoted, life-long partnership with Forrest through our marriage, when I enter our garden I do so in a similar spirit of dedication to a co-creative partnership with Nature.

A friend stopped by one day with her Mayan visitor, Jorge. When Jorge appeared at our garden's entrance I was astonished when he rolled his pants above his knees and knelt to kiss the earth. My friend later told me that this is a Mayan custom when entering a garden or field. This simple reverent gesture moved me so deeply that I have never seen entrances in quite the same way.
To enter a place with a full sense of consciousness not only empowers our own reverent spirit, but it also empowers the place and the Spirit of the place itself. Have you ever entered your garden in such a way - with such honor and humility? Have you ever conceived your relationship to the Earth as one of service, so much so that, as you stand at your garden's side you hear a voice within ask, "Beloved Earth, what are Your needs today?"

I can only imagine that Jorge's pronam was a way to uphold a sacred relationship he had entered into long ago as a child in the Mayan forests and fields surrounding his village. Wherever he travelled, he walked on the Earth and touched Her countenance as if for the first time, seeking Her good graces. Mayan culture sees in the earth one's tether to the Divine. To be allowed to enter our garden was to uphold a reciprocal sacred bond based on unconditionality and trust. Jorge was saying "If I am allowed to enter, then how can I serve Thee?"

This more spiritual view of entering the garden has only come to me more recently. Like Tricia, the garden was what lay just outside the back door. You passed by it or through it. You did not give much thought about entering it. The fence kept intruders out and the vegetables and flowers in (as if they were hell bent on storming the walls anyway). And the gate or entrance? Simply an exterior door hanging on rusty hinges of which you always wondered, lying in bed at night, if you forgot to close and lock.

Now when I reflect on the several entrances our garden has had over the years - each reflecting the garden's expansion and our own spiritual evolution - I think of the Principle of Rightness that has permeated the process. Much of our satisfaction or discomfort with choices in our life comes about by assessing how right something feels at that interior heart or gut level. We may think, Does this relationship feel right? Is this the right place and time? Does this spiritual path seem right for me? All of these questions have entrance points into the evolution of our soul - a "gate" or "door" leading us into yet another "room" or period of time and exploration in our life. Think of your soul as a garden, and you are faced with just how to enter it every day to nurture it. How you do so must feel right to you.

At one time our tiny garden resembled a prison compound, surrounded by field fencing and barbed wire. That was the garden we inherited from the previous owner. You entered it by pulling back a flap of wire fencing. Then several years later the garden was significantly enlarged, and I created a more formal batwing gate made of two-by-fours and one-inch lath. A geometric pattern based on straight lines, like the rays of a sun turned sideways, greeted visitors and kept deer out. It took a few years for me to realize what didn't seem right about this entrance - too clever, and the lines were too straight, like an exercise in Geometry 101. The lines of Nature are much softer and more fluid. Luckily, the garden was enlarged again, and I had my chance to do it right. But this time, over seven years after that first wire fence, I felt inspired by a Nature that had rooted like a spiritual teacher within my soul.

When you begin to think about the entrance to your sanctuary garden, consider what feels right to you. Is it in the right place, will it have a form and appearance that feels right? Is it fulfilling its purpose? A recent visit to a friend's house validated just this thing I am talking about. To the side of her house stood the bare wooden frame of a gate and several fence posts. She said it had been like that for months now. She felt unresolved about what type of statement she wanted this key entrance to her garden to make. Eventually she will surrender to what feels right for her. At least she is giving her entrance its full due consideration.

I strongly believe, after numerous garden entrances under my belt, that there is more to an entrance than just a gate or arch or narrow opening of shrubs for the body to pass through. In the mystical sense of the term, this is the door your consciousness passes through each step of the day. I am sure my friend above was thinking about this very thing. The Navajo concept of Hakomi reminds us to consider "Where do I stand in relationship to these things?" And that is exactly what entering our garden, home, or the open arms of our partner, friend, or child asks us to consider.

To gently stimulate this passage of consciousness, we have now created our entrance as a long threshold, perhaps over fifty feet in length. This outer garden chamber keeps the visitor there for a while, giving them time to relax and unwind. No hurry. This is spiritual time. There's eternity here in a flower, a beckoning bench, or the sound of water. And in this outer garden, there is a type of healing and soothing beginning to take place. One is remembering perhaps a long forgotten connection with the Mother of life. And this is good. A worthy relationship due our full sense of devotion.