The Magnolia Principle: How Seeds, Weeds and Needs Bloom Inner Peace
by
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Foreword:
Read this floral philosophy and free yourself of electronic foolery. Today we slog through digital information but find little meaning. The Internet overwhelms and makes too much too easy. Software skews learning. Not long ago when unsure of how to spell a word, we looked in dictionaries, and to our surprise found words we did not know. Now software checks our spelling and sends us the news stories it thinks we want to read. The newspaper alerted us to news we did not imagine but might find useful, even if only to stretch our minds. But gardening is different from virtual reality, so different we forget to realize why we love it so.
In this book blossoms some plant-centered philosophy. Eminently sensible, provocative, and immediately useful, The Magnolia Principle analyzes attitudes expressed via plants and offers an escape from computer-generated buzziness. In these pages plants take on alternative meaning.
Here plants become portal. The principle of the title emphasizes choice, the choice to look around positively, accepting some loss in exchange for some gain, but always with the intention (and the hope) that gain will triumph. A magnolia might bloom many times in
Wisteria triumphs only slowly, as its roots reach deeply: years later, pruning the roots with a spade often produces spectacular blossoming. Hydrangeas need water, lots of water, at first: they need a patient gardener, one willing to water regularly and frequently and munificently. Rhododendrons too can and will triumph in
In the pages that follow Cheryl Jacques walks carefully through that portal, guiding the reader into the philosophy suffusing plants, a philosophy especially valuable in this hurried, jittery age. The magnolia principle illuminates friendship, aging, illness, disability, energy, determination, and the sheer joy that plants provide when gardeners see past their frustrations and vexations through the portal plants provide. Here find a modest book whose meaning is rare and lasting.
John R. Stilgoe
Professor of Landscape Architecture
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About the Book
Think you know – or want to know – all about gardening? Ever wonder how much you might learn just by asking a simple question like: “How do you feel about Magnolias?”
Myriads, says fifth-generation (Harvard MLA-degreed) landscape designer Cheryl Jacques – about life, hope, embracing Nature’s dizzying diversity, coping with disappointment (over changes in things and dreams); about persistence, patience, spirituality, joy and love.
In these pages Cheryl Jacques shares with you the great mystery she calls The Magnolia Principle that breathes at the heart of gardening and of all being. And she tells you how, even beyond gardening’s healthful nurturing, you can learn…
From Magnolias, how to root your spirit in what’s lasting… from Wisterias, how to wait for great beauty to bloom… from Hydrangeas, how to nurture neediest things… from Shrub Roses, how cutting down can build up… from Indian Pinks, how to dance with hummingbirds… and much more.
Cheryl and her best friend Amie invite you into this delightful garden of spirit and Earth, to learn from them and Nature herself, the practical and mystic secrets of… The Magnolia Principle.
About the Author
In The Magnolia Principle, fifth-generation landscape design professional Cheryl Jacques, MLA Harvard (Master of Landscape Architecture), shares about more than just gardening; she offers a provocative meditation on life and spirit rooted in Nature. She has created The Magnolia Principle to inspire both first-time and seasoned gardeners to explore the reasons why and the ways gardening can enhance their joys and heighten their perceptions of daily life.
Poignant email conversations between Ms. Jacques and her best friend, Amie, who suffers from ALS engendered this book and help center it around concepts such as patience, contemplative delight, freedom from obsessions to “control” one’s natural and personal environments, and how, through the archetypal backdrop of Nature, gardeners who embrace her Principle can even deal with disappointment to achieve blossoming self-realization.
Cheryl explores how the different personality quirks of each and every one of us can, in harmony with those of plants and flowers, teach us gratitude and acceptance of our own roles in spirit-success, change and death, to help us anticipate ever more rosy futures. The Magnolia Principle’s engaging accounts of client conversations and curious things people say about landscaping, “fertilized” with piquant poems through which plants and flowers “speak to us for themselves,” make for a humorous, inspiration, informative and thought-sparking book indeed.
Join Cheryl and her friend Amie in their walk through The Magnolia Principle’s unique philosophical gardens of the mind!