Whenever we want to start with our garden, we put so much effort in trying to fit the ideal design plan and focusing on the amount of yield we are getting… we tend to forget that we are working with a living system! The garden has its own life, from the thousands dormant seeds found in a small patch of soil  that been there for centuries waiting for the proper circumstances to sprout, to the underground ecosystem where mycelium, roots and organisms work together to nourish that life…  

I planted last year most of my garden flowers and perennials either from seeds or cuttings. I took the pathway of the nun, the pathway of abstinence leaving the plants to develop in their natural cycle, undisturbed, with no trimming or harvesting until they bloomed, seeded and completed their cycle…I wanted to observe and study their propagation rate, flowering stages, root growth… only to come this year to find the garden popping up with flowers and plants here & there growing on their own from last year’s seeds ! 

Some were birthed from seeds such as giant sunflowers growing where i was previously processing them, kale popping out few meters from their mamas among the zucchinis enjoying the shade given by its leaves… Different pantones of pansies spreading across 3 terraces,
most likely promoted by ants transporting their seeds… Dandelions seeds that blew with the wind a terrace away and opted to grow amongst the peas & cucumbers and borage’s insane persistence in returning in double and triple patches… Others propagated from their roots such as sweet Violets and strawberries throwing shoots half a meter away to propagate and spread faster…Mugwort, hyssop, and stinging nettles, which were planted close together last year, sprang up this year, taking up the precise amount of space required for them to develop comfortably!

So i ended up being guided by the land and the plants, growing my greens under the shade of the cherry and prune tree, mulching and watering the new kales and sunflowers, growing my beans where I wanted privacy, deweeding around what so called weeds between tayyouns, oregano and hollyhock…

making space for the new strawberries and violets shoots… suddenly my design became so clear and it felt that I was just organizing what seemed to be chaotic… The land somehow guided me to the design that I couldn’t have imagined.
When I started communing with the garden as another living being my experience shifted from a one sided to a two-sided beautiful dance and play! Planting the same space every year became like a conversation between me, the plants and land, resulting a completion of the natural scene… year after year everything seems to be making more sense!