Mindful Gardening Newsletter – No 47

A week of remembrance, renewal, and the quiet beauty of planting seeds—both in the earth and in the soul.

Feb 16, 2025

Welcome to this week’s Mindful Gardening Newsletter. Let me begin by quickly outlining the content of this week’s newsletter.

• Honoring Life Through the Garden – Discover how planting bulbs, hedges, and flowers can become a sacred act of remembrance, connection, and renewal.

• Walking the Beauty Way – Learn how a simple garden path became a symbol of harmony, reverence, and balance, inspired by the Navajo tradition of walking in beauty.

• Creating Spaces for Growth – Explore the vision of a garden room enclosed by a hornbeam hedge, where nature, community, and even a sound bath might come together in the years ahead.

• The Art of Seed Planting – Join me in this season’s mindful gardening experiment—sowing onions, beets, cauliflower, kale, and flowers—and see what flourishes in the months to come.

Mindful Gardening Newsletter No 47

It’s been a challenging week, and it was only yesterday that I felt that I wanted to do some gardening. This was with the help of Lennon who did the heavy lifting regarding the creation of the ridges into which I planted the hornbeam hedging which will surround the planned lawn at the back of the garden shed.

This week we buried our beloved older brother John Michael Cuckson. It was sad but also a time of coming together to celebrate his life. I spent much of the previous week pulling together a service of remembrance which in the end many people said they loved. One person said it was one of the nicest tributes that she had heard at any funeral. I think that was because I spoke about the soul of the man and not the personality.

The Beauty Way Unfolds

Last year early autumn I planted about three thousand bulbs. It sounds a lot, but they are very small, and Bee and I simply scatter them where we want them to share their beauty and cover them with bought in compost. Most are crocus of different colors. I have planted many in the planned lawn and in the orchard. I am looking forward to a colorful display.

The above photo is taken on the East side of the property that I call The Beauty Way. It’s not looking so beautiful given all the celandine but there will be time to remedy that over the coming months. I call this part of the garden The Beauty Way because it is on the lane where walkers pass. Last year a gentleman stopped me and said, “You have made this so beautiful.” I was a bit taken aback but my heart soared, and I eventually found the words “Thank you very much.” So, I called the edge of the lane The Beauty Way. This refers to a path of harmony, reverence, and balance, inspired by Navajo (Diné) traditions and the universal longing to walk in beauty – “May you walk in beauty, may you walk the beauty way.”

Creating a Garden Room and Lawn

Yesterday Lennon and I got to add more ridges into which I plant hedging. In this case it is a hornbeam hedge. The plan is to give the birds more shelter in the winter and to provide safe nesting places to bring up their young. The above shows the hornbeam with brown leaves but these will soon produce some beautiful leaves of green.

This hedge is fairly quick growing and so in a number of years we will have a room where you are able to walk unto a lawn. The plan is to have this space available for the 7 metre bell tent were we might have some yoga or a sound bath on one or more of the equinoxes or for my second seventy fifth birthday in late May 2025.

Sound is the force of creation, the true whole. Music then, being the voice of the great cosmic oneness, should be used not only for pleasure but as a path to awakening. - Hazrat Inayat Khan

The Gift Giving Continues

One of the joys of living here in Cordressagagh are the gifts keep turning up. I have an angel of a young man who is a close neighbor. He turned up today with a nightlight with John’s photo on the front. We have placed that nightlight in that section of the house which we call the ancestor corner.

Our Wee Johnnie
Our Wee Johnnie
Is a gentle man.
Not a dapper man
A gentle man.
In Sunnymeade
They are softening
Him up with
Love and tenderness
So that he might live
His heart mantra
That will set him free
Thank you Thank you Thank you.
Our Wee Johnnie
Is a gentleman
Not a dapper man
A gentle man.
Tony Cuckson

Sunnymeade was the residential home were he learned to unfold into thankfulness.

Planting Love in the Garden

Claude Monet - Irises

When someone close to me by way of friendship dies it is now a tradition to plant a rose in their memory. This week I did some research on looking for a rose to plant in John’s memory. I haven’t decided which to go with and I might wait later in the year when the bare root roses are available.

However, I have decided that I am going to plant some bulbs that remind me of the importance of love and friendship. So, I have ordered the following to ensure that I am mindful of this invitation.

• Iris – Light of My Heart

• Dicentra – Burning Heart’s

I’ll plant these when they arrive in early March on the sunny side of the Robin hedge in the Rumi Garden. The mystic poet Rumi is all about the awakening of the heart.

I have come to drag you out of yourself and take you into my heart. I have come to bring out the beauty you never knew you had, and lift you like a prayer to the sky. – Rumi

Tomorrow’s Seed Planting Endeavor

The forecast for much of this week is for rain so I am planning to sow some seeds. The above is the living room table laid out in preparation for this endeavor. I have a 72 module seed tray which is of sturdy construction, and I plan to plant up this tray with three types of onion seed. For this purpose, I will be using tweezers or the head of a match that is dipped in water. Once these are planted, I will cover them with the lightest covering of vermiculite.

I haven’t tried planting onion seed before, but I found that with onion sets the onions tend to be small and go to seed fairly quickly. The reason is that the sets are in their second year and are ready to produce seed heads rather than plump out to be sizable onions. We will see.

I will be taking another 72 cell seed tray to plant up: -

• Beetroot.

• Cauliflower

• Kale.

In addition, I will be using special planters for sunflowers and sweet pea which have long roots and don’t like to have their roots disturbed.

Having done the seed sowing I will be able to begin to update my gardening software by way of what is called Airtable. With this information I will be able to share with you what is working and how it is working. This database will give me great information for the following seasons.

Conclusion – Walking the Beauty Way Forward

Our Wee John’s Red Headed Mother who loved her garden - Soul of a Rose - William Waterhouse

As this week ends, I find myself reflecting on the cycles of life—of planting and remembering, of loss and renewal. The garden, like the heart, holds space for all of it. Whether in the hedging that will shelter new life, the bulbs that promise color in the seasons ahead, or the quiet corner honoring ancestors, each act of tending is an offering of love.

Let the beauty that you are be the work that you do - Rumi

The Beauty Way unfolds, not just in the land but in the way we walk through it—with reverence, with presence, with the knowledge that what we cultivate today will bloom in ways we cannot yet see.

So, as I scatter seeds and plan for the days ahead, I carry with me the wisdom of sound, of silence, and of the earth’s gentle rhythm. May we all walk in beauty, in the garden and beyond. Until next week may your hands be in the soil and your heart open to the song of the earth.

Note – I am busy writing four new newsletters which I plan to release on my 75th birthday and beyond. These include: -

• Bringing Heaven to Earth. - 20th March 2025

• A Yoga Journey. - 21st March 2025

• The Deep Heart’s Core.

• A Creative Life.

I hope you will consider joining me in the sharing of these other invitations to Companioning Your Greatness and flowering all that is seeded within you so that you might be blessed and KNOW that you can bless. (W. B. Yeats).

Tony Cuckson – Cordressagagh - Ireland