A Garden of Love and Healing: Living Tributes to Those We Have Loved and Lost [Paperback]

 

 

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"For every flower than opens in your garden, another wound is healed in your heart." -Unknown

"A Garden of Love & Healing" is a book filled with unique ideas for creating a living tribute to those you have loved and lost. Marsha Olson shows you how to create a memory garden which can be elaborate or a single tree. This garden can be created in your own backyard or in a public space.

In order to create your garden, Marsha gives information on the symbolism of plants, common garden themes and guides for preparation, installation and maintenance of a garden. She also explains remembrance rituals.

Throughout the book, the author shares personal stories and photographs of actual memory gardens. You will notice they are places where you can wander through, stepping on smooth stones or where you can sit on a chair or bench. These are places for reflection.

The chapters include:

Nature's Healing Spirit
Giving Your Garden Meaning
Garden Themes
Preparing, Installing, and Maintaining Your Garden
Accessories for a Memory Garden
Dedicating Your Garden
Final Thoughts

Through this book, you can learn which flowers represent the month you lost your loved one or what the color of the flowers you choose symbolizes. If you were to make a garden for a friend, you might wish to plant "zinnia: thoughts of absent friends."

You might also want a "theme" garden and you may want to plant:

An Herb Garden of Memory
A Meditation Garden
A Patriotic Garden
A Spring Garden of Memory
A Monet Garden for an Artist
A Bird and Butterfly Garden

Some of the pictures have a name engraved in stone surrounded by plants. "A Garden of Love & Healing" is for those who want to honor the legacy of a beautiful soul who touched their life in a meaningful way.

Note:

While this book is specifically for memorial gardens, there is also a great amount of information on the meanings of flowers and page after page of "The Victorian Language of Flowers" which is an extensive list. There is also a list of Selected Plants arranged by common name with their botanical name, type, zone and light needs. This book might also be helpful for florists or for anyone who wants to create a garden to honor a living relative or friend. Wouldn't it be beautiful to create a garden for someone you love while they could enjoy it? This book has many possibilities.

Gardening is definitely therapeutic and it helps take your mind off your worries and
stress in everyday life.

I am delighted to review this beautiful book because it offers such creative and healing ideas for affirming and celebrating life throughout one of life's most difficult passages, the loss of a loved one. It offers myriad ideas for creating garden tributes, places of beauty and solace where we can honor lost loved ones in an atmosphere of peace and hope. This book is filled with useful ideas and directions for physically creating garden retreats, large and small, but it is also brimming with compassionate and sensitive advice for grieving people. It's meditative tone gently creates a vibration of healing and an appreciation for the cycle and interconnected web of life. It helps us to connect with Nature's healing spirit. It offers a list of plants representing each month, discusses the symbolism of color, touches on the Victorian language of flowers, as well as several themes and their associated plants. These lists are detailed and out of the ordinary. They are filled with thought and care and are diverse enough to suit most any need. Poignant quotations and the personal thoughts of others surviving loss grace the book throughout and help one to relate and open to healing as if in the company of gentle friends.
Many different garden themes are suggested, of varying sizes and complexity, such as an herb garden of memory, a meditation garden, a patriotic garden, a garden in remembrance of a baby, a bird and butterfly garden, among several. Sporadic photographs illustrate the book and lend inspiration as well. Descriptions of several famous memorial gardens are described such as The Danny Thomas Memorial Garden near St. Jude's Children's Hospital in Memphis and the Wrigley Memorial Garden on Catalina Island.
Sometimes getting busy and putting our body to work is the most therapeutic thing we can do for ourselves when we are hurting and this book suggests that principle in the chapter that explains how prepare, install and maintain your garden.
Suggestions for accessories such as trellises, bird baths, chairs, benches, plaques, engraved stones, statues and artifical lighting are discussed. Dedications for the garden are discussed. All in all, it is a very effective book in terms of nuts and bolts how-to advice, but its most precious gift, one which I feel every grieving person could benefit from, is the holistic perspective that it restores to a heart rent with loss and pain. By inviting us to be creative and to pay tribute with our own talents, ideas, efforts and physical work to someone we have lost, it gives us an opportunity to go inward and search out the best and most life-touching attributes of our loved one and the gifts and meaning that the relationship gave to our lives. It helps us to gently shift our focus away from loss and look toward legacy. To be remembered is something that most of us hope for and this lovely book will help greatly in the process that brings us through to remembering the life rather than the loss. I highly recommend it.

A Garden Of Love & Healing: Living Tributs To Those We Have Loved And Lost by grief counselor and experienced landscape/garden designer is not a traditional gardening guide, but rather a book for experienced gardeners who wish to create and dedicate their growing in the memory of a loved one. From choosing plants with the right traditional meaning to embracing the healing spirit of nature, A Garden Of Love & Healing is a gentle, thoughtful, unique, highly recommended guide to celebrating beloved memories through the art of nurturing and growing plant life.

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