Gardening has always been an aspiration of mine. Maybe it is my Liverpudlian grandmother’s blood coursing through my veins that influences my horticultural hankerings. Yet, the reality of having my own garden has always seemed a bit out of reach due to my busy life of work, family, and community commitments, as well as a lifetime of extensive traveling. The possibility of me putting down roots—literally or figuratively—has been containerised by circumstances and therefore I’ve had to make do with a collection of nomadic potted plants over the years, which would eventually get dispersed among friends as parting gifts when that time inevitably arose.
Ironically, I am quite passionate about sustainable community development and have been involved in it nearly everywhere that I’ve lived, especially on the Big Island of Hawaii (also known as Hawaii Island), which is where I lived for the eight years leading up to my move to the UK, and where I met and married my best friend, Graham Ellis, who happens to be a Brit from South London. We were both living in an “artistic ecovillage”, a lively community of circus and theatrical performers that Graham founded 25 years prior to my arrival there.
Gardening in a tropical jungle on the slopes of the most active volcano in the world is a much different experience to that of gentile plots in rural England. It is raw, wild, and untamed. The 10-acre lot that we lived on had a thriving food forest that Graham had planted in the early years of the community’s development which flourished and provided us with most of our daily nourishment: bananas, coconuts, pineapples, papaya, guava, passionfruit, breadfruit, soursop, citrus, avocados, Okinawan spinach, and other exotic fruits and vegetables. We also had an army of insectivorous chickens that assailed the plethora of tropical creepy-crawlies and produced the most high-quality eggs that tempted even me, a steadfast herbivore since the mid-90s. This low-maintenance form of growing food suited us perfectly as our life was a circus in many ways.
Most importantly, Graham had grown an abundant “garden” of family and friends that had started with his seeds of passion for the circus arts, which he brought with him from his years of living in the Pacific Northwest of Canada, and sprouted into a children’s social circus called HICCUP (Hawaii Island Community Circus Unity Project). As this garden grew, so did his love for ecological, sustainable, and simple living. This is where our paths converged. My children attended his blooming circus camps, I got involved in the Hawaii Sustainable Community Alliance (a non-profit ecological advocacy organisation which Graham founded), and the rest is history (or her-story, in this case).
When circumstances arose several years ago that necessitated us to transplant ourselves to England, I was devastated at the loss of our island community that we left behind. Our lives were deeply rooted so the upheaval was jolting. The transglobal relocation was a delicate and laborious process which had a multidimensional affect on us: physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, economically, socially, and environmentally.
After our high-profile lives in Hawaii, where we were both involved in many community leadership projects and organisations, it felt a relief at first to slow down and anonymously coalesce into British culture. The holiday home we purchased in St. Leonard’s—just a half mile from the care home where Graham’s mother lives—was like a flowerpot that contained our lives of suspended animation while we contemplated our next steps and searched for the ideal community for us to put down our roots again.
When a suitable house became available early last year in our top choice of Rye, we were overjoyed as it also came with spacious gardens and the potential of finally growing our own food again. After taking a few months to get firmly planted, we were finally ready to explore the social opportunities in Rye. While walking home from town one evening, we happened upon a banner out front of the Tilling Green Community Centre that advertised a weekly gathering of the Quakers. Although we didn’t identify as such at the time, we each came from an eclectic liberal ideology which we found greatly aligned with the Quaker’s inclusive nature. We decided to take a leap of faith and attend that Sunday.
As we walked into the meeting room, we were warmly greeted by a small circle of smiling faces like sunflowers turning towards the sun. As we took our seats, a feeling of serenity immediately embraced me, and over the next hour of silent contemplation, my heart was filled with gratitude for this new group of Friends. After the gathering, we were invited to the Rye Conservation Society’s annual garden party later that day, where we met and chatted with many lovely people and sowed more seeds of friendship.
From that day, many lovely relationships have sprouted and bloomed. New friends referred us to their friends, as well as to various groups, clubs, events, and gatherings that have further added to our new vibrant social garden.
One of our favourite communal events is the weekly gathering and work party at the Rye Community Garden on Saturday mornings from 10am – 12noon. It has provided us with so much nourishment: both whole foods and soul food.
As a dual board-certified health and wellness coach, as well as a Reiki practitioner, a holistic approach to living is important to me and my family. I have spent over 25 years studying, teaching, and working in the field of natural and integrative lifestyle medicine.
Last month, Graham and I helped facilitate the “Stone Soup” event at the garden where Graham gave a presentation of the composting project that he is leading and I shared some inspiration for wild-harvesting stinging nettles for their nutritive properties.
On September 25 from 2-4pm, Graham will be leading a sustainability forum at Tilling Green Community Centre, which is hosted by our Friends at Rye Quakers, where he poses the question, “How can we live more simply so that others may simply live?” With climate change as such a hot topic and sobering reality, this event provides an opportunity for us to come together as a community to discuss our concerns, ideas, and suggestions so we can devise hopeful plans for our future.
To carry on this crucial theme, I will be leading a half-day workshop on Saturday, October 8 at the Elysian Centre from 11am – 5pm called The Path of Most Resilience: Inspired Action for an Uncertain Future. Rather than continuing to take the path of least resistance of complaisance, this bold and inspiring workshop focuses on ways that we can rise up together to pave a new path by building our resilience: physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
At some point, I realized that I’ve actually been a gardener my whole life—in a metaphorical sense—in planting seeds of friendship, connection, and awareness everywhere that I’ve lived, a bit akin to the story of American pioneer Johnny Appleseed. As a native of Seattle in the state of Washington, which is the largest producer of apples in the United States, I guess it’s quite an apropos metaphor for me.
“Love is the seed of all hope. It is the enticement to trust, to risk, to try, to go on.” — Gloria Gaither
Image Credits: Kenneth Bird , Hiccup Circus , Graham Ellis , Dena Ellis , Liberty Giverns .