Beginnings

Hello and Welcome. This is the short story. In October 2008, I had an epiphany: Create a place based on sustainable practices that would bring together the arts, sciences and the lay community together in one place. I would then share my fascination and passion for the plant world by inviting these participants to experiment with how to "make contact" with plants and share their experiences with each other and the rest of the world. If you haven't read the book "The Secret Life of Plants" I encourage you to pick it up and become delightfully amazed at how people from all walks have been intrigued, fascinated and called into relationship with plants of all kinds. This was the book that started my own curiosity with the unnoticed qualities inherent in plant life.

Soon after the idea of "Livinghearth" came to me, I shared it with a certain circle of friends who became excited. The researching leads started to trickle in. This is when I began to discover "permaculture" and some of the names and organizations pioneering the way into holistic, creative, intutive agriculture and awareness of plants. People like Bill Mollison, David Holmgren, Sepp Holzer, Penny Livingston, Masanobu Fukuoka and organizations such as Findhorn, Melliodora, Rengerative Design Institute..the list goes on. I didn't realize that I had stumbled upon a movement that had been steadily growing since the early 1970's.

At first I was overwhelmed. I thought, "Everyone is already doing it." But what I soon realized was that there were still multitudes of things to learn, specifically within the concept of a personal relationship with plants. To me, it's one of the natural progressions of the permaculture movement. It's not a big leap for most to understand that a re-focused attention on land, the lives of trees, and of plants can lead us to directly improve their quality of life through host of activities such as proper planting, timely addition of nutrients and planting certain plants together to support each other. A bigger leap would be understanding that simply one's presence and attention to a plant with the intention of actively loving it and thereby knowing it and be willing to understand it, can lead to a whole new dimension of how we understand and relate to the plant world, our food and the rest of the species of life on the planet, and that plants will respond back! I know it sounds a little wacky, but trust me..start with reading the book I mentioned, and come back and read some more. If nothing else, join me on this journey via this blog.