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WORK TITLE: The Garden Awakening
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://marymary.ie/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Irish
https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/the-garden-awakening/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Ireland; children: two.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Garden designer and writer. Has appeared on garden television shows.
AWARDS:Gold Medal, Chelsea Flower Show.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Mary Reynolds is an Irish garden designer and writer. She works with clients in the United Kingdom to design gardens for homes and for public spaces. Reynolds has been hired to take on projects at the Kew Royal Botanical Gardens in London, England. Her Celtic Sanctuary garden, which she designed for the Chelsea Flower Show, won the gold medal at that event. Reynolds has appeared on gardening television programs on British networks.
In 2016, Reynolds released her first book, The Garden Awakening: Designs to Nurture Our Land & Ourselves. The volume features drawings by illustrator Ruth Evans. Reynolds recalls her early years in gardening, noting that she often worked against nature to complete a project. She explains that she had an epiphany one day, to which the book’s title refers, in which she realized that she needed to create gardens that were in harmony with nature. Reynolds suggests that this epiphany was of a spiritual nature. She notes that the book is meant to share her realization with others and offer them tools that will allow them to connect their own gardens to nature. Reynolds mentions her Irish roots and includes Gaelic words in the volume. Ireland, she explains, is home to many sacred spaces and supernatural energy, which should be acknowledged when gardening there. Reynolds highlights the healing qualities that can be experienced during the act of gardening. She suggests that the gardener may realize personal changes that need to be made while working in his or her garden. Reynolds also offers practical tips on how to keep pests and weeds away from one’s garden. She encourages readers to seek out options that do not involve putting chemicals in the soil. Reynolds highlights natural insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides. She instructs readers on how to plan gardens with sketches, how to design a forest garden, and how to mix in edible plants.
The Garden Awakening has received favorable reviews. Library Journal contributor Jeanette McVeigh commented: “This unusual and beautifully illustrated volume, complete with a ribbon bookmark, reflects ‘outside-the-box’ thinking from a singularly talented landscape designer.” Referring to Reynolds, a Publishers Weekly critic observed: “Her directions take a holistic approach, going beyond practical advice to spiritual guidance.” “The book is lovely, weighty, and well designed,” remarked Sarah White on the Foreword Reviews Web site. White added: “Reynolds delivers solid information with a touch of fairy spirit that will come across as charming even to those who don’t lean toward the mystical. The book urges gardeners to find their roots in their land.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Library Journal, August 1, 2016, Jeanette McVeigh, review of The Garden Awakening: Designs To Nurture Our Land and Ourselves, p. 113.
Publishers Weekly, May 2, 2016, review of The Garden Awakening, p. 48.
ONLINE
Foreword Reviews Online, https://www.forewordreviews.com/ (July 27, 2016), Sarah White, review of The Garden Awakening.
Mary Reynolds Home Page, http://marymary.ie/ (February 23, 2017).
About
Mary Reynolds strives to be a good listener. By listening carefully to her client and the land in question, she undertakes the design of gardens that marry the needs and wishes of the lands guardian with the needs and wishes of the land itself. With her roots in natural gardening theory, Mary seeks to create spaces that are healing, truthful and magical.
She also encourages the clients to form their own relationship with the little piece of earth they are lucky enough to call their own, their gardens.
A Chelsea flower show gold medal winner, Mary has designed gardens internationally for more than 17 years, including commissions in Kew Royal botanical gardens in London as well as occasional stints of garden television presenting for RTE and BBC.
Mostly she spends her time growing two very magical wild children who are the stars of Mary’s garden.
MonartA feature length movie based on Marys true life story will be released in 2016. This focuses on the story of Marys journey to build a gold medal winning garden at the Chelsea flower show.
The Garden Awakening – Designs to Nurture Our Land and Ourselves
Mary is also developing her years of listening to the land into a comprehensive and ground – breaking book. Her new approach to garden design is a practical treasure map that leads gardeners into a gentle and healing relationship with the land. This book is a step by step instruction manual drawing on ancient methods of working with the land and using them to invite the power and energy of nature back into your life and surround your house and life in its life giving healing embrace.
MonartIntroduction to the book:
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.
QUOTED: "This unusual and beautifully illustrated volume, complete with a ribbon bookmark, reflects 'outside-the-box' thinking from a singularly talented landscape designer."
Reynolds, Mary. The Garden Awakening:
Designs To Nurture Our Land and Ourselves
Jeanette McVeigh
Library Journal.
141.13 (Aug. 1, 2016): p113.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Reynolds, Mary. The Garden Awakening: Designs To Nurture Our Land and Ourselves. Green. Sept. 2016. 272p. illus.
index. ISBN 9780857843135. $29.99; ebk. ISBN 9780857843142. GARDENING
Many gardening books describe how gardeners create outdoor spaces; this one begins with healing the partnership
between the underlying land and the gardener. For awardwinning garden designer Reynolds, walking and knowing the
environment precedes any planning or planting. Her gardens are more terrain, textured hillocks, and paths,
incorporating symbols that are heavy with meaning (spirals, circles, squares), to create places for wishing, praying, and
releasing. Trees are anchors, and every plant has a purpose that is useful and spiritual. Sketched plans for small,
medium, and large gardens show both layout and how mature plantings may look. The second half discusses the
growth of a forest garden, a sustainable evolution taking three to ten years. Plant suggestions based on function
(canopy, shrubs, vines, etc.) provide soil preferences and edible parts. Wellknown alternative methods of mulching,
managing pests, and controlling diseases are the practical yin to the magical yang of this book. Biodynamic and
permaculture gardening practices permeate this work, and Monty Waldin's Biodynamic Gardening would be a
straightforward introduction to these biodynamic theories. VERDICT This unusual and beautifully illustrated volume,
complete with a ribbon bookmark, reflects "outsidethebox" thinking from a singularly talented landscape designer.
Recommended for most collections.Jeanette McVeigh, Univ. of the Sciences, Philadelphia
McVeigh, Jeanette
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
McVeigh, Jeanette. "Reynolds, Mary. The Garden Awakening: Designs To Nurture Our Land and Ourselves." Library
Journal, 1 Aug. 2016, p. 113. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA459805111&it=r&asid=61e560a6eeb1f4f23b7796ca20c4d171.
Accessed 2 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A459805111
QUOTED: "Her directions take a holistic approach, going beyond practical advice to spiritual guidance."
The Garden Awakening: Designs to Nurture Our
Land and Ourselves
Publishers Weekly.
263.18 (May 2, 2016): p48.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Garden Awakening: Designs to Nurture Our Land and Ourselves
Mary Reynolds. Green Books (IPG, dist.), $39.99 (208p) ISBN 9780857843135
Reynolds, a longtime garden designer, awoke one day to the realization that she could not go on as she had, creating
dead zones" by constraining nature to her will. This treatisecumstorybook explores her spiritual awakening and
reconnection of gardens with nature. She designed her book as a guide to give gardeners a gentle nudge in the right
direction": that is, back to nature, toward truth. Headnotes in both English and Gaelic emphasize Reynolds's connection
to her native Ireland, which she depicts as a land of sacred places, geometry, symbols, curses, and magic. Her
directions take a holistic approach, going beyond practical advice to spiritual guidance; she claims that gardening can
show the gardener what needs working on in life itself. Reynolds offers alternative methods of land management
beyond chemical therapy. She alternates stories of her family and culture with organized layouts, howtos, and recipes
(for example: natural fungi, herbi and insecticides). She encourages adding fauna to flora along with imagination,
dreams, charms, and memory. Ruth Evans's illustrations add resonance. Color illus. (Sept.)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"The Garden Awakening: Designs to Nurture Our Land and Ourselves." Publishers Weekly, 2 May 2016, p. 48.
General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA452884047&it=r&asid=3c1576811ca68ec1a8a5c7868d267116.
Accessed 2 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A452884047
QUOTED: "The book is lovely, weighty, and well designed."
"Reynolds delivers solid information with a touch of fairy spirit that will come across as charming even to those who don’t lean toward the mystical. The book urges gardeners to find their roots in their land."
The Garden Awakening
Designs to Nurture Our Land and Ourselves
Reviewed by Sarah White
July 27, 2016
Reynolds delivers solid information with a touch of fairy spirit that will come across as charming even to those who don’t lean toward the mystical.
Mary Reynolds’s The Garden Awakening works to show that trying to claim too much of a hold on the land, even with good intentions, can cause trauma; instead, gardeners should be focused on healing. Herself an Irish garden designer who turned away from manicured spaces to create more mystical, wilder, healthier spaces in tune with nature and the spirit, Reynolds uses this book to show how creating a garden is much like raising a child.
The author combines sound gardening advice with a heavy dose of mysticism and spirituality, suggesting the use of sacred symbols and shapes in the garden and asking would-be designers to set an intention in their space and set aside areas for things like wishing, praying, and releasing, as suit the gardener’s needs.
The book is lovely, weighty, and well designed, with whimsical drawings by Ruth Evans, as well as garden plans and depictions of how the gardens look with landscaping and after the planting is complete. While Reynolds clearly believes in the power of symbols and the energy they bring to a space, the book is also a good reference for people who want to create spaces in harmony with nature, even without layers of symbolism.
The author’s focus is on developing what she calls forest gardens, built layer on layer with trees, shrubs, herbaceous plants, ground cover, underground plants, and vines. The intent is to bring fertility to the land and to produce food in a natural space. Many pages of tables offer suggested plants for each layer and describe the plant’s characteristics and where they grow best.
Reynolds delivers solid information with a touch of fairy spirit that will come across as charming even to those who don’t lean toward the mystical. The book urges gardeners to find their roots in their land, to remember that the land belongs to nature, and to do all they can to awaken their space and bring health and fertility to the land and to themselves.
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The author of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the author for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.