Gardens and Libraries

Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.

An “inclusion garden” of “Immortality Blooming” white irises, magenta bougainvilla, succulents, kumquat and stone fruit trees thrive near a swale

Thomas à Kempis in The Imitation of Christ wrote, "I have sought tranquility in everything and found it nowhere except in a corner with a book." Books gave me my first taste of heaven on earth and like Jorge Luis Borges, “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” My appreciation of gardens and passion for gardening, on the other hand, was consciously cultivated! But it didn’t take me long to discover that I was just like the controversial winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature George Bernard Shaw. His pithy statement “…the best place to seek God is in a garden” is borne out by a ton of books in the library. Gardens and libraries are great places for human development.