After the Winter Solstice each year, the Angels share the designs for the next year’s gardens. One design reveal I look forward to with particular relish is the Venus Garden reveal. This garden is the energetic cutting edge of Green Hope Farm. The designs always surprise me, yet the themes always prove timely and deeply supportive.
Sometimes I am given a Venus Garden design with no other information than what plants go where. Creating and living with the garden for a growing season brings the insight and learning. Sometimes I am given a bit of information about the purpose of the garden before it is made manifest. This year when I was given the Venus Garden mandala, the Angels said I would be planting a Dhuni Fire garden.
My grasp of a Dhuni Fire is limited. My understanding is that it is a sacred fire that helps us burn up the flotsam and jetsam of our personalities and all that impedes us on our spiritual journey home to Divine oneness. My beloved Meher Baba had a dhuni fire lit once a month in his home in Meherabad, India. I’ve had six months to mull over what it will mean to have a Dhuni Fire garden here without coming to any conclusions. Right now, I am thinking of the Dhuni Fire garden as bringing a fire of purifying love.
In early spring it was time to start seeds for the garden. The Angels picked plants with names like Molten Fire and Burning Embers. Sometimes those Angels are so subtle. Flowers in this garden include Marigolds, Snapdragons, Bachelor Buttons, Four O’Clocks, Lions’ Ear, Castor Bean, Sunflowers, Tithonias, Zinnias, Chamomile, Nicotianas and Sweet Alyssum, The Angels laid out the garden as a spiral moving from tall plants in fiery colors in the center to orange then yellow then pink and white Flowers. While the Mehera white Marigolds often are planted in the heart of the Venus Garden in a protected position, this year over a hundred Meheras rim the last circle of the spiral.
There were a fair amount of snafus offset by a couple synchronicities while getting this garden ready to plant. The Angels wanted a long straight pole in the center of the garden. The Elementals conveniently had a fifteen foot birch sapling bite the dust about fifty feet from the garden. I dragged this over to the garden with a minimum amount of fuss.
A dozen streamers were meant to be attached to the top of the pole then pulled out like a circus tent to the edges of the garden. The pole and streamers had to be in place before the garden was planted yesterday, so I went to get supplies a few days before. I decided to use ribbons for the streamers. I went to the local strip mall to a big box fabric store. I timed my rare expedition off farm perfectly. When I got to the fabric store, there was a note on the door saying the shop was closed for a couple hours because of staffing issues. I wasn’t going to wait around in a hot parking lot for two hours when there was so much to do back at the farm, so I went on to another big box craft store.
Former math teacher Jim had done the math, so I knew I needed ribbons that were 20 feet long. At this craft store, ribbons came in 3 yard increments. This meant I would need 36 rolls of ribbons. This seemed ridiculous. I abandoned the ribbon idea.
Perhaps if the fabric store had been open, I would have gone back there for fabric to sew some streamers. But the place was closed, and I needed to figure something else out. After prowling the aisles, I decided to use tulle. I bought rolls of 4″ wide tulle in fiery colors. I also bought a few rolls of white tulle. When I got home, I discovered the robustly colored tulle was also robustly covered in micro plastic sparkles that came off in my hands. I didn’t want a Venus Garden that was an ecological disaster, so the colored tulle was out. Thankfully the white tulle had no micro plastic sparkles, and I had enough white tulle for six of the twelve streamers. For the other six streamers, I decided to use some chunky wool from Barcelona given to me by my son Ben. I’ve been hoarding saving this wool with its gorgeous colorway of red, yellow and blue for a decade. Its time had come.
First I dug the hole for the pole then I attached all the streamers to the top of the pole. The streamers had to be in place before we set the pole, because attaching streamers to a pole fifteen feet in the air seemed challenging even to me who often thinks I can do things I can’t. Jim, Elizabeth and her children Grace and Henry helped me drop the pole in place. Right away the Barcelona yarn began to break apart in the wind and rain. That’s right, I forgot to mention it was pouring rain with a stiff wind from the east.
The pole had to come out of the ground so I could do some more head scratching. I decided to tie I another support yarn to the Barcelona beauty (so thick and luxurious looking but actually so fragile ). I picked a tough yarn and when I was done knotting it to the Barcelona wool, the pole was relaunched.
This part of the process involved some yelling as Jim and I argued about what was necessary to keep the pole safely in the ground. I always underestimate these things and think a fifteen foot pole will just naturally stay upright. Jim as the sane person in our argument insisted on additional chocks. And so we imported rocks, gravel and cinderblocks to anchor the pole. I can verify that this pole will be going nowhere anytime soon. I can also verify that Jim agrees with me.
Sadly, there are no photos of us fighting about what was needed to anchor the pole. However, the good news is that the Dhuni Garden is already burning up ego crap! After the pole was in place, I parted the mulch hay in a spiral design, preparing the dirt that the plants would live in by adding organic amendments.
I add organic amendments to the soil, things like greensand, soft rock phosphate and kelp. When planting, I dip each baby plant in a bucket of water that contains Superthrive ( a vitamin mix), our Green & Tonic Flower Essence and a Nettle decoction. The Nettle decoction is new this year for us. It gives baby plants some good nutrition for their start in the world. Baby plants often set back hard and seem pretty bedraggled after being planted out, and these tools really help them.
Another gardener friend was slotted to help me plant the garden, but she was unexpectedly ill on the day of the planting. The meant the planting team was me and Sheba. Together we moved all the seedlings grown for this garden from the hoop house to the the edge of the garden.
I had a general idea of what plants would go where, but I was interested by the way the Angels mixed the colors. At one point I was sure we wouldn’t have enough plants in the yellow part of the spiral, but the Elementals said there would be enough, and there were. At another point I had to do some forensic work to figure out which variety of Nicotiana was in which flat. The ink had faded on my labels, and it was only by looking at my seed orders that I figured out which flat was Nicotiana “Night Flight” and which was Nicotiana “Misty Dawn”. Well I think I figured it out. Time will tell. I can’t imagine what this garden is going to look like later in the season. The Flowers are mostly old friends, but they are planted in unusual combinations.
The plants were laid out in a circle of the spiral then I went back and dug them in after I got the green light from the Elementals that every plant that was meant to be in that circle was there.
As I put the last plant in the ground and creakily stood up to water everything in, I savored the lovely feeling of the garden. Apparently so did Sheba as she kept poking around then laying down in the garden. She usually has excellent garden manners, so I was a little surprised by her stretching out in the garden without regard to the baby plants. I guess she just wanted to wallow in the already ignited Dhuni fire of sacred love.
Just as I posted this a Green Hope Farm friend sent a photo of the air in NYC right now. Sending so much love to all affected by this very different kind of fire.