Sitting here amidst the floral profusion and verdancy of this garden in May, I find myself asking is there enough beauty in this world to offset the dark shadows created by humanity?

They say that crimson poppies grow abundantly in Flanders field covering the ugly scars of war. I’ve walked through battlefields here in the land where the scars have been all but obliterated by natures own industry. And yet there remains some aura of deep sadness lingering in the air and the wind has a different quality to it as if it remembered the cries of the dying warriors. In death the sworn enemies found the common bond of their own mortality.

As much as we need food and water and air we need gardens. Gardens have a natural capacity to heal the troubled heart and sooth the world’s weary soul.

More often than not I bring my small wounds and bruised ego to this garden and sit in the company of its population of trees and flowers and wait for its magic to touch me.

At twilight that healing magic seems all the more potent. The sense of some unseen presence is all the more noticeable in this hour of benediction. More now then ever the world needs gardens.

Perhaps if our leaders and their followers were to spend one quiet hour each day in the company of the green nations they would be touched by the presence of living beauty and turn aside forever from the negative patterns by which they live.

Will there ever be enough gardens to change forever the dark paths the world now treds.