Finally, I can sit down at home, take a breath and look around me. It has been a really intense couple of weeks. I feel it in the tightness and weight of my body which is slowly unwinding as I rest and tend to my neglected household. Over the past two weeks so much has happened: my grandmother passed away after a long battle with Parkinsons, I began full time work at my old job, shot up to Grass Valley for Grandma’s funeral, spent a sad yet wonderful July 4th weekend with family and friends, and then that Sunday my wife and I had to get up at 5:00am and hit the road so I could make it to the Regenerative Design Institute (RDI) in time to start a four day intensive course on Advanced Permaculture Design with Robyn Francis. So yes, things have been tumultuous and amazing all at once. Fairly symptomatic of this whole year when I think about it: full of a lot of uncertainty and unpredictability not only in my own life, but in the entire world as we face huge shifts and changes all over the planet.

Since I’m just returning from four days of intense immersion in Permaculture study, I’ve got patterns on the brain. One of the beautiful things about Permaculture design is that so much of the broader discipline is a discussion of general patterns in the world around us. Through thoughtful observation and wise application of these patterns, we can start to bring harmony and abundance into our lives whether it be in our relationships, in our career or….(dun, dun, dun!)…. in our garden.

On the last day of my design course, James Stark (co-founder of RDI) and Robyn Francis held a wonderful discussion on the realization of dreams and the power of intention. There were many threads in the discussion that connected with insights that I have been discovering in my own life as I make preparations to start my landscaping business. I have found these ideas very helpful and inspiring, so I would like to use this post to continue teasing out these ideas in the context of garden design.

The best place to start is by acknowledging the importance of imagination and creativity. Let’s sidestep the obvious, cliche discussions about tinkering with aesthetics, or artistry, or layouts, or structures, or whatever because I think I lot of people tie ‘creativity’ to intelligence, cleverness, artistic talent and who knows what else. Instead how about we go straight to the core. At the heart of things creativity is both fearless and dangerous because it has very little respect for what currently exists in the world. What the creative mind does then, is imagine and bring into consciousness concepts that have never existed in the material world before. Now that might sound a little crazy and far out, but the beautiful thing is, everyone single one of us is creative. If you have the slightest doubt, just ask the most unimaginative person you know to tell you what they dreamed last night. Our brains are WILDLY creative, so much so that our dreams can range from absolute absurd abstraction, to terrifying or sublime realism. Unfortunately, upon waking our culture, habits, relationships and our own internal monologue start to box that wildness in, contain it, strap it down with a list of do’s, don’ts, can’ts, shouldn’ts and so on. The most creative people I know are those who simply allow their imagination to roam free and have the courage to follow some of the outlandish ideas that result. The courage to follow an unusual or novel idea is the hardest part, yet it is a skill that can be learned. For some of us, it might just start with something very small like a flower arrangement, and from there we can work ourselves up towards the more ambitious creative thought and large scale creative action whether it be in garden design or in our career choices, it doesn’t matter. It just requires the resolve to start allowing our imagination to play a greater role in our lives.

Our imagination is powerful and incredibly versatile, and our brain can be very creative with pretty much anything that we hand it. As dreamweavers, we have amazing potential to bring wonderful designs into the world. Yet within our creative brains also exists the potential for utter chaos and lack of direction if we don’t focus on something. That is where intention and clarity of purpose start to play a crucial role in the design process. Without clarity, our imagination and our actions tend to meander and may not yield what we really want to accomplish. In our designs, whether they are for ourselves or others, it is crucial that we clarify the intentions surrounding the design so we can harness and guide the powerful forces of our imagination.

In the next blog post I will take these ideas a little further, touch on some practical ways to focus and tap into our imagination, and on top of it I’ll throw in a little neurology and theory to spice it up!

…continue on to Part II ->