Product Description

2007 Foreword Book of the Year Finalist (Mind/Body/Spirit)

2008 Independent Publisher Book Award for "Most Likely to Save the Planet" - Bronze Medal WinnerClea Danaan breaks new ground with Sacred Land-a fresh approach to sacred gardening that goes beyond your own backyard.     In this positive and practical handbook, Danaan shows how organic gardening can germinate environmental awareness and political change while feeding your spirit. You'll learn how to plan and plant your garden, create compost, save seeds, conserve and transmute water, connect with garden goddesses, and incorporate planetary energy in your garden.     Sacred Land explores the benefits of native plants, organic food and agriculture, buying locally, and eating seasonally. It suggests simple yet effective ways of spreading the message of ecology and sustainability to your community. You'll discover how to get along with ants, bats, bees, butterflies, fairies, frogs, gnomes, worms, and other creatures who share our gardens. This one-of-a-kind gardening guidebook also includes inspiring stories of women activists, farmers, artists, and healers who are making a difference in the world.

Book text printed on recycled paper

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48727 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

About the Author
Clea Danaan (Colorado) has been gardening organically for over fifteen years. Her articles on gardening and environmental activism have appeared in Sage Woman and Organic Family. She lives near Denver with her husband and daughter.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Sacred Soil

The soil is a vast kingdom beneath our feet, home to giant and minute earthworms, billions of bacteria and microspiders and ants, and wise, ancient stones. Rich black, sandy red, or pale and gritty, it is in the soil that life on land begins. But not all soil is the same-far from it.

The first step to getting to know a garden is to meet and appreciate the soil. The health of a garden depends on its soil. Just as a good house needs a strong foundation or a healthy child needs a stable home, a garden needs well-balanced, healthy soil.

Soil is a garden's immune system. Since soil builds a garden, and the garden brings health and healing to the gardener and the land, we begin our magic-making and world-healing in the dirt.

A few summers ago, I prepared a garden bed that had not been touched for years, a plot of mostly hard-packed clay. I turned over piles of the dark, slate-gray soil with my shovel. The sandy clay, granular but compact and moist, supported a few worms, including two behemoth night crawlers. Bits of charred wood and carbon specked the soil, perhaps remnants of an old burn. It smelled like a dripping cave, damp and cool. I felt a sense of the soil awakening, seeing sunlight for the first time in many years. I also sensed a curiosity from the soil itself and a willingness to explore the co-creative journey of garden-making.

In another bed in another garden, I met very different soil. Pale and gritty, the land had baked beneath Colorado sun for years. Digging it was like scraping ice, hard and unyielding. I felt a mistrust from it, like a rattlesnake eyeing me askance. Beneath this top dry layer lay clay, stone, and bedrock, layers that would give my garden a hardy, determined energy.

Whether you have worked a garden space for years or you approach a new bed that you have never met, take time to get to know the energy, perand style of the land. This is the beginning of any sacred gardening partnership.

Getting to Know the Soil In this book, I offer meditations for getting to know the garden better, and for sinking more deeply into yourself. We begin with the soil, the literal and energetic ground of the garden.

Find somewhere you can touch soil-a comfortable place outside or with a potted plant indoors. Sit in front of your plot of earth, and place your hands gently on the dirt. Feel its temperature and texture. Scoop up a handful, and look carefully at the soil, perhaps with a magnifying glass. Smell the soil.

As you interact with this earth, ask yourself how it relates to your own body. How do you express the qualities of strength and groundedness or of creativity and fertility in your life? Ask the soil aloud or in your mind what it has to teach you about being solid, about growing muscular roots. Feel any shifts in your body as you respond to the soil and it responds to you. When everyday mind-chatter slips in again, let it go, and bring your awareness back to your body and the soil. Take a few moments to still your mind and just be with the soil.

Expand your awareness of soil to include your entire garden, be it acreage or a window box. Walk through your garden, picking up handfuls of soil and extending all your senses. What do you notice? What does the land tell you about its history? How does each area interact with water or sunlight differently? How does the soil smell? Keep checking in with the sensations in your body. How does your heart respond to the soil?

Your hands? Your breath, your muscles, your mood?

Open-minded, openhearted observation is the first step in working with any garden space. Each garden is unique, with its own personality needs, and quirks. Just as you would in meeting any new friend, spend time listening and looking to know the land on its own terms.

You may wish to start a gardening journal, where you record your journey as a sacred gardener. Begin now by writing down what you discover about the soil. Add to your journal frequently, including drawings, photographs, and observations that are both objective and subjective. All of this information will aid you in working with your garden; testing the soil and feeling it with your heart are simply different ways of listening to the earth. Let your journal and your relationship with the land and its parts evolve like a poem written over time.

Draw a map of your garden in your journal, indicating what you discover from and about your soil, including sense impressions and soil tests. Record different colors of soil, size of the particles, water retention, and other observations. Which areas of the garden are in shade, and which are baked by sun? How does this change throughout the year? From which way does the wind blow in the summer? The winter? Do power lines cross the garden? Is there a nearby source of water? Does a neighboring tree drop leaves, needles, or fruit on your yard? What other elements affect your garden? Include the date of your observations, just to see how your skill of observation using all of your senses, including your "extra" senses, develops and changes over time.

You can also get to know your soil on a more "scientific" level by observing what types of soil make up your land, including its components, pH, and nutrient levels. This is valuable information in co-creating a garden with your land. What you discover about levels of nutrients can...(Continues)

Customer Reviews

Food and thought
I'm generally not a fan of gardening books, but this was an enjoyable and informative read. Most surprisingly, it's changed my approach to gardening. I hadn't considered my relationship with nature beyond trying to garden organically and not waste natural resources. Having read Danaan's book, I'm seeing my relationship with the land as more than simply scientific, and it has enriched gardening for me.

Blessed Gardens LOVES Sacred Land
Being an author myself, I love writers. I love artists in general, but when a writer pours their heart and soul into a book, I'm humbled. Clea Danaan has done just that in her astoundingly rich book, Sacred Land.

As I am going through a profoundly painful, personal loss at this time, the melancholy I felt when I looked at my beloved garden drove me back into the house day after day. I would see that which I had planted so lovingly months earlier blooming, and the joy of the flowers was too much for me. They reminded me of a time when I couldn't wait for them to appear, a time when I was happy. And now, here they were happy and abundant, and I simply didn't feel that way. I couldn't enjoy anything through my sadness.

Clea suggests in her book that when we go to sleep at night, to ask the devas for a dream. I did just that.

The next morning, I stepped out onto my deck and looked out at my garden, blocked by my massively tall weeping willows. I couldn't see much and felt disappointed that these trees were in my way. But something happened. I stepped onto my drying lawn, pulled a chair under one of the willows, and sat in the shade with my coffee and wept.

I cried about my divorce and all the time I spent laboring in my garden, hopeful about the coming months. I felt so deeply sad that I almost did hear them speaking to me. It was a soft buzz at first, and then it grew louder.

I sat up and wiped my eyes. I heard them; bees. They were everywhere around me, in the trees and in the [...] willows. They were so loud I almost forgot that we were in a bee crisis. The world was having a bee shortage. And in that moment, the bees were all in my yard. I laughed.

And then it dawned on me, there is never a lack, the bees are somewhere, aren't they? Don't we all go where we are noticed or appreciated? I sat with the bees for a long time that day. And I have slowly begun to care for my garden again.

I brought Sacred Land out to my garden and read it. Toward the end of the book, one question popped out at me: "What change do you wish to see that you might bring to the world through your garden?".

And perhaps that is best answered here. We can all bring the bees back by inviting them into our world, can't we? I once said to a client when she asked where I was going to get the money to fund my newest project--"from wherever it is now," I told her.

Sacred Land takes you through a personal journey. And while Clea outlines organic gardening and gives tips, be prepared to find a personal awakening between the covers of this book. This is more than a random book on gardening, it is a journey. And I thank her for my simple awareness and the profound reminder of the power of a garden. Her focus on Organic gardening is a deeply rooted passion for her and is evident with her generous links and suggestions throughout the text, gently guiding us to care for the earth. She also reminds us that a garden is something we leave behind for future generations.

A wonderful read, and a powerful moon journey. Sacred Land by Clea Dannaan is a magical and intuitive catalyst for change.

Wonderful book
This book was a super informative and enjoyable read. Clea is not only an expert organic gardner, but shares that wealth of knowledge in an articulate and meaningful way. The metaphysical connection she makes to this activity is brilliant and I'll just say that you don't have to subscribe to any particular philosophy to relate to it. I will continue to use Sacred Land as a reference tool in my organic gardening arsenal of information. Recommended.