We Are The Ark:
Returning Our Gardens to Their True Nature Through Acts of Restorative Kindness, with illustrations by Ruth Evans, will be published on 25 October by Timber Press and is available for preorder right now – click through for various options here or here at The Book Depository. Thank you to Publisher’s Weekly for this review.
The Garden Awakening: Designs To Nurture Our Land and Ourselves from Green Books Publishing is out now! Edited by the great Larry Korn and decorated with the most beautiful atmospheric illustrations from Ruth Evans, we’re excited to get it out into the world.
You can now buy a *signed* copy of The Garden Awakening directly from our website here (not eligible for shipping to the USA) or find it (unsigned) in shops in Ireland and the UK. Other online options are available at Amazon UK, Waterstones, and The Book Depository.
In America you can find the hardcover (& e-book) at Amazon, Barnes & Noble & some local booksellers.
IMPORTANT: PRINTING ERROR! Due to a publishing & type setting error – In the LAYER 5 plant tables in earlier printings of the book it has emerged that the description for Thymus x citriodorus (lemon thyme) was mixed up with the plant below it in the table – Vinca minor and Vinca Major (periwinkle). Vinca is definitely NOT EDIBLE. Please do not make this mistake.
You can see Mary’s book come to life in Claire & Joe’s Forest Garden, here on instagram or via their blog here on marymary.ie.
We have some lovely endorsements for the book here, including this one from the wonderful Jane Goodall!
Here Mary talks about her new book – Thank you to Jamie Goldrick for the visuals and Colm Mac Con Iomaire for the tune.
Click here for endorsements for The Garden Awakening
Press for The Garden Awakening
Denys & Fielding Book Review
The English Garden Magazine (PNG file)
Review at Foreward Reviews
The Japan Times – 25 June
Róisín Meets… Podcast for The Irish Times
Smithsonian Magazine – May 2016
Publisher’s Weekly – USA – May
The Irish Examiner – 30 April
Sunday Telegraph – 27 March
Remedies Magazine – April 2016
After many years as an internationally acclaimed garden designer, Mary Reynolds finally realised that something was amiss in her gardens; they were failing on some level. Unwilling to remain as she had imagined and sculpted them, the gardens could not help following their true nature. They were not still life paintings. The land had dreams and intentions of its own…
Mary set out to discover what these intentions were, exploring how we might build a relationship with our gardens that encourages the truth of the land to be expressed alongside our own truth and creativity.
Inside The Garden Awakening is the forgotten bible of gardening. Mary divined and collected old ways of working with land from before we lost the connection with the earth beneath our feet. None of this information is new; it is all ancient, forgotten knowledge and wisdom, buried in the roots of our ancient cultures and within the depths of the earth itself.
Mary has spent a lifetime learning how to live gently with the land, weaving the knowledge out of her own stories, experiences and dreams and bringing it into the light in a way that rips away any mystery or separation from the worlds of energy and spirit around us, and the world of the earth beneath us.
The Garden Awakening is a blueprint for a ground-breaking garden, but it is not a solitary space. Instead it aims to be the foundation of a world wide web of ever expanding, living, interconnected ecosystems. Places where people and nature are one and creation and interrelation expands. You will never be able to look at your garden in the same way again…
Everything becomes simple if you immerse yourself in nature. Life’s complications melt away, leaving only the truth of the present moment, and the presence of what I call God. In this place we can see our soul reflected in every living thing, every gust of wind and splash of rain, and here we can find peace. This is our true home. Yet we are losing what little wild places we have left in nature, those corners where the spirits of the earth are flowing freely, where harmony, and balance still exists and we feel accepted for the truth of who we are. We have gone off course and need to find our way again.An old pathway, overgrown and forgotten, is waiting impatiently to lead us back home. Nature is willing us on.