The Findhorn Garden: A Collaboration Between Humans and Nature
The Findhorn garden in the early 1960’s: living in trailers and collaborating with nature - devas and nature spirits - to grow amazing plants in barren soil.
Photo courtesy of the Findhorn Foundation.
Imagine being contacted by a plant.
You’re sitting peacefully in your garden enjoying the beauty of the plants and feeling deep joy within. Suddenly you become aware of an unmistakable presence associated with the plants. You look around but don’t see or hear anything. You settle back down. And then you feel it again, from deep within yourself: the plant is trying to connect with you!
At first glance, it might seem strange to consider the possibility of communicating with plants (though recent scientific research on plant sentience is compelling). Plants don’t appear to have a brain, a mouth, ears, or any other organs that we think of as necessary for communication. Not to mention the kind of intelligence that is required for a meaningful collaboration.
But if we limit ourselves to what we already believe about the world, we’re never going to learn anything new. We know from our own experience that humans are animated and intelligent and capable of connecting to one another, even though science can’t exactly explain how. So instead of assuming that plants don’t have a similar capacity, let’s suspend our disbelief and dive in to the Findhorn garden story!
Introducing the Findhorn garden.
In the early 1960’s, Peter and Eileen Caddy and their friend Dorothy Maclean moved to a caravan park in Findhorn, in the sandy, windswept dunes alongside the North Sea in the northeast of Scotland. They depended on their vegetable garden for food. But it wasn’t easy to grow vegetables in the cold windy climate and sandy soil, even amended with the manure and seaweed they found nearby. Yet somehow they managed to grow amazing plants, like a 42-pound cabbage and a 60-pound broccoli plant! Word got around, and soil experts came to test their soil. “It’s impossible,” they declared. “There must be some extra factor involved, but what?”
Eventually, Peter, Eileen, and Dorothy shared the strange secret of their remarkable success. The Findhorn Garden: Pioneering a New Vision of Humanity and Nature in Cooperation tells their magical story. In a nutshell, the extra factor was the plants themselves: the plants were collaborating with them. The plants grew to unbelievable proportions in the poor soil to showcase the potential of humans forming cooperative relationships with nature.
Meeting the devas and nature spirits
Dorothy experienced a type of plant being she called a “deva”, a Sanskrit word similar to the word “angel”. Her first communication was with the deva of one of her favorite plants, the garden pea. It happened while she was in a deep meditative state, focusing on her love for the pea. She was content to be communing with nature and didn’t necessarily think it was possible to connect directly with a nature being.
But as Dorothy felt deeply into the essence of the pea plant, she received a clear response from the Pea Deva. The Pea Deva informed her that “nature” was interested in collaborating with them in the Findhorn garden. Imagine that! Dorothy’s initial response was tentative. In her book To Hear The Angels Sing, she says,
“It was not easy for me to go against normality when I could prove nothing to myself or anyone else in a pragmatic way. It is not easy for our souls or for our intuition to surface in a materialistic world.” - Dorothy
In a materialistic world, the only things that exist are things we can see and touch, things we can measure and engage with scientifically. It is not easy to comprehend a direct connection to nature through an intuitive way of knowing. Even stranger is the idea that plant beings – such as devas – exist and are able to communicate with us. Yet this was Dorothy’s experience.
Over the years, Dorothy communicated with many devas. She learned that each plant type has a deva – there’s a Pea Deva, a Kale Deva, an Apple Deva, etc. The devas explained that they hold the patterns for all the possible ways in which the plants can materialize in space and time. The devas themselves exist outside of space and time.
Enter the nature spirits.
Robert Ogilvie Crombie (Roc) was a close friend of the Findhorn garden. He was able to communicate with the plant world too – not with devas but with beings called “nature spirits”. He was scientifically trained and like Dorothy, had to overcome his own disbelief when he first established contact with these beings. As he explains, the nature spirits work in the “etheric” realm to infuse “life force” into the plants.
The analogy used in The Findhorn Garden is that the devas are the architects of the plants while the nature spirits are the craftsmen. The devas hold the patterns, and the nature spirits guide how the patterns materialize in space and time. There is one Kale Deva holding the patterns for all possible kale plants, and many different nature spirits work with the “life force” of individual kale plants as they grow and develop.
When we look at plants, we see only the outer, finished form of the plant as it grows and develops. We also know something about how the plant uses sun, soil, and water in its growth process. But we can’t see or scientifically study the plant’s formative processes that are guided by the devas and nature spirits. We can, however, work with these formative processes by collaborating with the devas and nature spirits.
Collaborating with the devas and nature spirits
There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to communicating with plant beings. Here’s what Dorothy and Roc say about it in The Findhorn Garden:
“The process by which I contact the devas is one of feeling into the essence of a plant and harmonizing my own self with it. The communication doesn’t come to me as words, but as thoughts of inspiration, which I then express in words according to my own state of consciousness at the time.” -Dorothy
“And the communication between us was, no doubt, taking place on a mental or telepathic level by means of thought transference, probably in the form of images and symbols projected into my unconscious mind and translated into words by my consciousness.” - Roc
What I love about Dorothy and Roc’s relationships with the plant world is that they didn’t communicate only about how to design the garden and handle specific plants. They also learned about the function of the devas and nature spirits and how they relate to the human world.
The devas and nature spirits explained that they act for the “good of the whole” because they are in touch with the unity of everything. But humans have forgotten this unity. Humans act as individuals, focusing on a part and losing sight of the whole, which often has destructive consequences.
Now, take a deep breath and get ready to hear an important message from the devas and nature spirits. They are not happy with how humans dominate and control nature, and they view humans as a sort of “parasite” on Earth. Could it be so? When I step outside my human world for a moment and reflect on how our presence might be affecting other beings, I can certainly see it this way. It makes me want to get down on my knees and humbly beg for forgiveness.
But all is not lost. Here’s what we can do about it:
We can shift from controlling nature to collaborating with nature, co-creating a balance that benefits all beings.
If you’re thinking about starting right in on this project by sitting with your favorite plants and seeing if they will make contact with you, great! But it might require some preparation on your part. Dorothy, Peter, and Eileen had a long-standing spiritual practice that was an important groundwork for being able to connect with nature beings.
One practice was to focus on positive thinking. If you’ve ever practiced letting go of your negative and critical thoughts, you’ll know that it’s truly a meditative accomplishment to maintain an ongoing state of joy and positivity! But when we do, the devas and nature spirits are more likely to connect with us.
Another one of their spiritual practices was to tune in to their “inner divinity” and listen to their “inner voice”. This requires the incredible effort of quieting down your busy mind and tuning in to the wholeness within yourself, until you can hear guidance coming from within. We’re more likely to “hear” the devas and nature spirits if we are present, aware, and receptive.
The larger context of the Findhorn garden story
As you might imagine, there have been attempts to discredit the Findhorn Garden story. Some have suggested that the amazing growth happened because of the unique microclimate in the area. Others have shown that they also could grow enormous vegetables with extensive amounts of manure.
Before hearing about the Findhorn Garden, I never thought about the possibility that humans could collaborate with other beings. I loved plants, but I didn’t think of them as beings. Hearing about devas and nature spirits made the scientific part of me feel somewhat uneasy. But at the same time I felt incredibly excited about the possibilities!
How about you? How have you been reacting as you read about Findhorn?
If you have only a Western scientific education, the Findhorn garden story might seem radical or even unbelievable. It doesn’t make sense for beings like devas and nature spirits to exist in a materialistic world where reality is limited to what we can study scientifically and observe with our physical senses.
But collaborative relationships between humans and plants are not a new idea. And the Western scientific way of knowing is not the only valid way of knowing.
The Findhorn garden story is exciting and beautiful in its own right, and it might seem revolutionary (or impossible) to those of us educated in Western scientific ways. But it is not a new discovery! In cultures based on wholeness and interconnectedness, such as Indigenous cultures, mutual reciprocity between humans and nature is a way of life.
Ecologically, we’re beginning to recognize the interrelatedness of life, and we’re attempting to keep the environment in balance. Scientifically, research on plant sentience is gaining traction. But the Findhorn garden story suggests that we are missing an entire aspect of nature – devas and nature spirits – that is crucial to our survival. Similarly, Indigenous knowledges suggest that we need to re-establish a reciprocal relationality with nature.
If it’s possible to collaborate directly with nature, imagine what a difference this could make in integrating Western and Indigenous ways of knowing and in addressing our current ecological crises! I don’t think we can afford to ignore this possibility.
