Garden labyrinth provides serenity
BLOOMINGTON -- One woman started walking the boxwood labyrinth, only to bend over and start pulling weeds along the mulched path. Mariellen Griffith made her start over.
It's about the journey, not the weeds.
The purpose of a labyrinth is to help erase the distractions of the day, calm you and bring you a sense of clarity.
That's one of the lessons the psychotherapist and master gardener tries to teach at her Bloomington home, where paths lead to 12 themed gardens.
But she doesn't expect people to be chatting about her ferns or the water spilling over boulders in the water pond. It is a place for silent retreats.
Usually, Griffith starts her day with a garden meditation, carrying a cup of coffee among the coneflowers and hostas. She's out there even in the winter, and if it snows she trudges across the backyard in cross-country skis.
Of course, when her children were still at home, she didn't have time for meditation, she said, but as a retired professor she often finds insight in her own backyard.
Margaret Kelly, who led an October retreat with her, believes nature, with its natural rhythms and ordinary miracles, can help us heal our body, mind and spirit. She lives across from the Miller Park Zoo and finds the trees, birds, even the howling of wolves, calming.
"Nature has a way of getting us grounded," she said. "It has a soothing, calming effect. The whole feast for the senses is very peaceful."
As a spiritual director, she encourages clients to think about tending the garden of their soul, even letting weeds grow among the flowers.
"Not to get carried away with imagery but there's a place for weeds too," she said. "And sometimes we need to let them be until it's time to remove them."
Visitors to Griffith's garden will find a few weeds competing with the dill and thyme in the herb garden or joining the ornamental grasses. But she doesn't worry about them, or edging the beds or paths that lead from one garden to the next.
"Some people want this neat and clean, and life isn't that way," she said, as the late afternoon sunlight turned sycamore leaves lime green.
In her practice, she's often asked about the meaning of life. She encourages meditation, and nature is the perfect place to take a time out, she said, as she walked along a pebbled path lined by nasturtiums.
Strolling through her gardens feels like a Sunday afternoon walk in the woods. That's intentional, she said.
"You slow down. That's the beauty of it. Sometimes I have to force myself not to trim or deadhead. You're just in the garden."
A natural rise in the landscape spurred the idea for a trail that starts with redbuds and dogwoods and ends with Colorado aspens and blue spruce. In each garden, there's a place to rest, whether it's a simple chair or a stone or wooden bench.
It seems like all gardens lead to the labyrinth, seven concentric circles protected from the rest of the world by sky-high arborvitae.