Spiritual Gardens Natural Beauty Download VERIFIED

The gardens of the American Academy in Rome express a rich and layered historical heritage that goes back in time and is the result of a unique fusion between Italian and American landscape culture. The Academy is the custodian of a precious site and a rich garden tradition and has the responsibility of fostering it for future generations. The gardens express profound understanding of the art of gardening, of the aesthetic and the ethos of landscape and nature, and of the value of landscape and nature to the life of the mind. The gardens, with their immaterial heritage, cultural significance, and environmental value, give enjoyment and spiritual fulfillment through sustainable horticulture.

The gardens must provide an oasis of beauty, inspiration, and tranquility, while furthering the appreciation of the historical environment to the community at large of the American Academy in Rome. Our landscape is an indispensable and lasting feature of life at the American Academy, providing the community, staff and visitors with positive impressions and rewarding experiences, fostering an appreciation of the natural world, and stimulating environmental awareness and intellectual engagement.

Spiritual Gardens Natural Beauty Download

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Restrained, tasteful horticultural display conveys a sense of harmony and elegance. Our gardens play in a subtle way on all our senses, enhancing for each garden area its own special qualities and atmosphere. We strive to create serene beauty and avoid self-conscious designs, just as we avoid garish effects and unnatural planting schemes.

Center yourself in this spiritual garden oasis located right along the Pacific Ocean! Self-Realization Fellowship is an amazing coastal and natural beauty that was founded by the father of yoga. This garden gives you a chance to connect with your spiritual, explore self-realization, and soak in the ocean waters and blooming botanicals around you. These gardens become a personal sanctuary to meditate and connect with oneself and nature. Witness the beauties that lie in the koi ponds as you reach a sense of relaxation and peace. Breathtaking views and tranquil thoughts will surely help you reset in this stunning spiritual garden.

Gardening is never simply about gardens. It is work that reveals the meaning and character of humanity, and is an exercise and demonstration of who we take ourselves and creation to be. It is the most direct and practical site where we can learn the art and discipline of being creatures. Here we concretely and practically see how we relate to the natural world, to other creatures, and ultimately to the Creator. We discover whether we are prepared to honor these relations by nurture and care and celebration, or despise and abuse them. Gardens are a microcosm of the universe in which all the living and nonliving elements of life meet, elements ranging from geological formations and countless biochemical reactions to human inventiveness and age-old traditions about cuisine and beauty. When and how we garden gives expression to how we think we fit in the world. Through the many ways we produce and consume food, we bear witness to our ability or failure to gratefully and humbly receive creation as a gift from God.

Previously, the gardens of the Heian Era (794-1185) were lavish recreations of Buddhist visions of paradise. Lords and ladies of the Imperial Court would go boating there amid the sumptuous beauty. But in the Kamakura Era, the balance of power shifted, and the samurai-warrior class rose to prominence. Zen was quickly embraced by the samurai, who identified with its emphasis on simplicity, self-discipline, and the importance of meditation to find one's true self, undistracted by ostentation and worldly possessions.

Perhaps because the life of a garden is also a vivid reminder that anything of beauty and radiance takes time, takes care, takes devotion to seed and sprout and bloom, gardens have long been living cathedrals for the creative spirit.

With the hustle and bustle of everyday life, it can be hard to feel connected to your spiritual side. Take some time at the Flowing Waters Retreat Center in Bayfield to listen to nature; the center emphasizes the importance of connecting with your higher self through spiritual reflection and renewal. Whether you prefer to walk or sit, at Flowing Waters you can meditate by gardens, ponds or on nature trails. Feel free to schedule a massage or take a class too.

The northeastern side of the Big Island is lush and tropical thanks to a combination of the high volcanoes, constant trade winds, and tropical temperatures. The Hilo and Hamakua coast are filled with rainforest, waterfalls, and tropical flowers and these natural treasures can be most easily seen in one of the botanical gardens on the Big Island.

Reverence for Nature

From antiquity the Japanese have revered natural beauty, and their gardens seek to recreate this world in microcosm. Seiwa-en is designed to be appreciated in all four seasons. In winter, snow on bare branches or stone lanterns is regarded as a flower, or sekka. In spring the blossoms of cherry trees and azaleas give way to the myriad greens of summer and to chrysanthemums and vibrant maples in autumn. As one moves around the irregular perimeter of the lake, each turn of the path reveals plantings chosen to create a different focal point or mood that changes with the seasons. The beauty of nature is also celebrated by the garden's weathered stones, thatched roofs, wooden bridges and bamboo fences, whose simple forms and textures echo the surrounding plantings.

Such rock gardens were for viewing from vantage points within the adjacent temple buildings; the gardens themselves were not intended to be entered. They were conceived as an aid to meditation, the principle spiritual exercise of Zen in which a practitioner looks within himself for the way to salvation. Created as a means toward Zen self-examination and spiritual refinement, dry landscapes were meant to be the antithesis of gardens designed for pleasure or the gratification of the senses. Instead, the spare, austere arrangements of rocks were expected to help clear the mind of worldly attachments that would otherwise impede the attainment of enlightenment by this introspective means.

Typically flat gardens consciously combined features of the late rock garden with others adopted from the tea garden. Even at temples flat gardens were without the rigorous spiritual connotations of the Zen dry landscape, but were designed in a pleasing, decorative manner with the introduction of many more plants. A flat area of gravel, typically adjacent to the residence from which it was viewed, was bordered on the far side by shrubs, trees and suggestive rock arrangements. Other features might have included garden ornaments such as pagodas (tahoto), water basins, wells, lanterns, and stepping stones used as accents and focal points. Such ornaments, particularly garden lanterns, water basins and stepping stones were innovations introduced to Japanese garden design in the landscaping of rustic huts (soan) intended for the practice of the tea ceremony. They did not appear in Japanese gardens prior to the late 16th century.

What a beautiful time of year this is. The cold, starkness of winter has been replaced by the warm, budding growth of summer. And with this change of seasons, for many will come the inkling to plant gardens. Some will be busy choosing just the right flowers and vegetables to plant; while still others will be plotting out the perfect location that will provide the optimum sun and shade for their gardens. This, of course, will be followed by the inevitable work of cultivating the soil, planting the seeds and preparing for the upkeep and general tender loving care that goes along with a well tended garden. As the season progresses, there will be the efforts to ensure that the gardens receive the right amount of water and nutrients to enhance their growth and before you know it little sprouts will begin to appear; which inevitably leads to pruning, weeding and watching out for all of the unwanted pests that naturally invade gardens, if left unattended.

What condition is your garden in? Have you been diligently attending to it? Or has it become overgrown with weeds of bitterness, resentment, discord, criticism and fault finding or invaded by the cut worms, aphids and bugs of self-pity, gossip, malice, hypocrisy, lust, drunkenness, deceit, disobedience, envy and slander? Now is a good time to make an honest evaluation of the condition of our spiritual gardens. Scripture warns us to rid ourselves of all that would cause our spiritual gardens to lose its abundant harvest. Colossians 3:5-10 tells us: Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.

Located at the heart of the acclaimed Getty Center in Brentwood, the 134,000 square-foot Central Garden was created by renowned artist Robert Irwin. The design features a natural ravine and tree-lined walkway that leads visitors through a sublime experience of sights, sounds and scents. The walkway traverses a stream that winds through a variety of plants and gradually descends to a plaza with bougainvillea arbors. Continuing through the plaza, the stream cascades over a stone waterfall into the signature floating maze of azaleas surrounded by specialty gardens.

Tucked away in the Pacific Palisades a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean, the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine is a lush, ten-acre site with gardens, a spring-fed lake, and a variety of flora and fauna. Founded by Paramahansa Yogananda in 1950, the Lake Shrine welcomes thousands of visitors each year to enjoy its scenic beauty and serenity. The Mahatma Gandhi World Peace Memorial is a "wall-less temple" that features a thousand-year-old stone sarcophagus from China, which holds a portion of Gandhi's ashes in a brass and silver coffer. 2351a5e196