Cultivating the Inner Gardener

Create your own garden sanctuary

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Cultivating the Inner Gardener's Online Class
10 Weekly Lessons -- Only $25

If you're curious about Cultivating the Inner Gardener but not quite sure you're ready for personal coaching, there's a way to dip your toe in the water. Just click the button with the white tulips that says "Learn More About My Online Course." This will take you to a page that describes the 10-week course. Click the "Enroll Now" button, fill out the form, and choose your payment method.

The first lesson is available to you immediately. Then, each week for nine additional weeks, you'll receive an e-mail that announces that the next lesson is ready for you to view online. If you prefer, you can print it out to read at your leisure.

Each lesson is loaded with information about unearthing the meanings, memories, and values that gardening holds for you. Through ten weeks' worth of assignments and activities, you'll learn how to create a gardening program that incorporates those feelings and translates them into the investments of time, money, and effort needed to achieve your goals. Included in the $25 price is the opportunity to ask up to three follow-up questions.

Making Meaning Through Gardening

Gardeners and environmentalists share one thing in common: Their motivating force comes from inside themselves. That is the first step toward making meaning.

Making meaning investments in the things we value comes next. But the world isn’t constructed to help us do that. Life gets busy – child care, elder care, careers, home and car maintenance, and daily chores consume our lives. If we don’t make space for investing in meaning we’re bound to be disappointed in the most important areas of life.

I see lots of beautiful gardens. These are produced by following the rules of proportion and landscape design and implemented by selecting appropriate plants to execute the design.

But where gardeners have made a meaning investment, you see and feel something more than just another pretty space. There’s an inexplicable, but tangible, x-factor in those gardens and it resonates in people who visit. The gardener has invested some whole part of himself, or herself, into the garden. That self may not even be known to the world outside of the garden.

What separates these gardeners from others is how they approach the gardening process, how they express their personalities and creativity through their gardens, how body/mind/spirit plays itself out in their gardening activities, and the pleasure they take in the journey.

Cultivating the Inner Gardener coaching is all about making that process conscious.

 

Which of these 9 stumbling blocks is stopping you 
from creating the garden of your dreams?

 
I work with people who are struggling with purpose, meaning, and life choice issues related to gardening; gardeners who want to make better choices that result in a personal space that provides a sanctuary from the world and speaks to their souls.

• Have you been to other people’s gardens that have a magical quality, but can’t seem to create it in your own?
• Do you feel like you’re going through the motions of gardening without getting much enjoyment?
• Are you unsure about where or how to invest your time, energy, or money?
• Do you feel that you’re doing all of the right things, but still don’t have a garden that is you?
• Do you have trouble believing that your gardening efforts matter?
• Are you concerned that you need to make some important changes but don’t know where to start?
• Do you second-guess your choices and keep switching from one thing to another?
• Are you frequently bored or anxious about your garden?
• Are you fed up with fitness routines that are disconnected from your garden?

If you are experiencing any of these difficulties, here's how I can help!

Cultivating the Inner Gardener is not about the garden, but about putting gardeners in a mental space that allows them to develop an intimate, holistic relationship with their environment.

Through a series of assignments and exercises you'll learn how to rediscover and focus on the things that really matter to you about your garden, restore meaning to your gardening efforts, and revitalize a cherished pastime.

Here are some links to get you started:

http://loisdevries.blogspot.com/2008/06/what-does-your-garden-mean-to-you.html

http://loisdevries.blogspot.com/2008/02/your-garden-pleaser-or-teaser.html 

http://loisdevries.blogspot.com/2008/01/eric-maisel.html

For personalized coaching information, send an e-mail to loisj7@gmail.com or call 973-383-0497.