“You never know-you never know!” yelled my friend Miyoko. She was rebuking me for complaining that my backyard had been turned into a total mess. With strewn shovels, hoes, flowerpots, seed trays, and bags of peat moss everywhere, it looked as if a tornado had hit. Adding to the disarray, piles of stone and dirt lay beside dug trenches. The person responsible for this havoc, my friend David E. Thomas, explained, “That’s what stone walls in progress look like.” This elderly gentleman, who had just started rooming in my old farmhouse, envisioned this plot of land in the mountains as the future site of his garden. Between the house, which was in dire need of repair, and its surrounding landscape, anyone else (except Miyoko) would have regarded the scene as a construction site in a state of chaos.   

Several months earlier in 1989, David had suffered from severe stomach cancer that caused the removal his entire stomach, duodenum, and spleen. After surgery and five chemotherapy treatments at Sloan Kettering, he amazed the doctors with a miraculous recovery. His cancer was in total remission and he was able to digest food with the loop the surgeon made from his intestines. Without health insurance, David was left penniless after the operation. David had been the director of a New York City high school in which I had once taught, and after I had moved to Pennsylvania, we agreed that he had a better chance of recuperation there in the country. Although I hoped David would help me fix up my house with whatever energy he could muster, he understandably had his own agenda. Knowing that each day could easily be his last, he spent his time doing only those things that generated joy in his life. During the growing season, he spent 60 hours a week landscaping and gardening. Needing to be surrounded by animals, he cared for dogs, cats, chickens, ducks and geese. He spent his remaining spare time and money cooking elaborate meals for a dozen neighbors.   
  

A wonderful gardening companion

My frustration that Miyoko had addressed was tempered by the end of that summer as the flourishing greenery began to hide the scattered tools and garden equipment. Over the next three years, David constantly expanded the borders of his garden. At the end of a good day’s work, he often would sit in his rocking chair on the back porch while overlooking his garden and tell me, “By gardening I tap into nature. It’s there that I find my cure.” He would say this with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. (It still puzzles me, a long-time vegetarian with a holistic approach to health, why he treated his body so harshly yet grew his plants organically.)    During the late fall of ’93, after David completed his garden’s final stone wall, his cancer returned with a vengeance. While being fed intravenously, he lay where he could look out the   window and see his garden although a foot of snow covered it.

On March 22, 1994, he said, “If it’s sunny outside tomorrow, I’ll go outside and sit on the front steps.” The next morning was sunny, but he passed away soon after sunrise.   

David never saw his flowers bloom that spring… or did he? Although he never made any arrangements for anyone to tend his garden nor even spoke about its fate, his plants seemed to have a will of their own. In April, the snow melted and the ground thawed, giving way to a single crocus that poked through the very soil he once tended. A month after his death, nearly a thousand tulips and daffodils made a similar appearance. Looking upon his garden with a sense of awe and reverence, I greatly missed the friendship we had developed. Yet, his garden in search of a gardener made me feel his presence in an eerie but comforting way.   

A seed had grown and taken root in David's garden that not even he could have been aware of. I learned all I could about gardening and started to tend it. It was no coincidence that two weeks prior to my friend’s death I had started using flower essences to help deal with the grief as cancer claim his life. So along with gardening books, I read several about flower essences. The first essence I made was from forget-me-nots because David’s friend had buried these flowers with his ashes. Without even knowing what the essence properties of forget-me-not, I started taking it. I later learned that, as the name implies, it is for helping us realize our new connection to those who have passed on.   

My avid interest in holistic health and the healing arts discovered a "field" in which to flourish. For two years, I gave away hundreds of bottles of flower essences from David's garden, feeling they were gifts of the earth. (The bottles and postage were gifts from me.) Hearing repeated success stories convinced me of their ability to change lives in a positive way. More than anything, I wanted to share the healing power of David's flowers with others in a more far-reaching way. With no business background, I started David's Garden, a venture that has enabled me to devote myself to this wonderful modality. My efforts have been on fine-tuning a line of 21 combination essences for specific emotional issues. With names such as Letting Go, Take It Easy and Get Off Your Butt, they are available in several stores.   

Miyoko was right: I had no idea how the disorder in my backyard would eventually become the very site where I would discover my life’s work. But to have said that I would “never know” was inaccurate. For me, David’s garden has been a most special place where I continually learn life’s many lessons, including the rewards of patience. I also believe that all gardens can be sacred spaces where we can learn to work in harmony with nature. I now know, dear Miyoko, how G-d works in mysterious ways… but especially through a garden.   
   

             Sincerely,       

Jack Braunstein is an FES-certified flower essence practitioner and has developed his own line of flower essence blends through his company, David’s Garden.

© 1998 David's Garden, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.