Shadows in the garden.
It is the hardest lesson for a Landscaper to learn.
The gardens are not just access points put together in a pleasing manner. They also reveal the heart of the Landscaper, the signature resonance that will overlie the landscapes in her care. It is a reflection of who the Landscaper is, and her innermost self will be manifested into plants and stones and water for everyone to see.
If the heart tries to lie, the garden will reveal that, too.
But every student’s first attempt tends to be a pretty lie. All the plants are the ones that symbolize kindness and generosity, patience and understanding. Love. Despite the student’s best efforts, the garden struggles to survive because the dark feelings that are denied also resonate in that confined space and have no patch of ground to call their own. So they interfere, tangle up the currents of power, thrusting up where they don’t belong. And the garden fails.
It takes time to find the courage to display the parts of yourself that aren’t bright and shining. But you have to see them, have to know they’re inside you, because they will resonate in the landscapes you control. Because you, as a Landscaper, are the sieve through which all the human hearts in your landscapes touch Ephemera—and none of those hearts lives completely in the Light.
So every Landscaper has to learn, and acknowledge, the dark side of her own heart in order to keep our world balanced.
Shadows in the garden.
They are a part of all of us.