When Jesus stood up out of the grave, he appeared to Mary Magdelen as a gardener (more on that in April). In brief, esoterically explained, it has to do with the etheric "ghost" (or phantom) that remained of the cruxified Christ (God-man). That's the aim, folks! To transform the flesh into a hallowed sheath, or perfected etheric body with purified astrality, and the Spirit man (Super I) at the helm (Atman). The crux of the Christian story is to let you all know: you too, can do this to. Try this at home, by all means! Or so the Anthroposophic version of Christianity goes...
In contrast to
Babur’s Garden, 16th C. British Library. More on - Persian - Paradise gardens here
which stands a lot closer to the Christian (medieval) traditional view on gardens: 
A Mary Garden by unknown artist of the 15th century. Art Gallery, Frankfort
How to purify the soul
won't you, now? Well, it's about taking apart to better amalgamate again. A bit like you learn what to do for poems in poetry class (if such a thing still exists). Or it's like the alchemical practice with all its many stages of purification and transformation; basically from the first "gate" of calcination ... to separation... congelation ... sublimation to the final three steps of exaltation, mulitplication and projection. Or so the Magnum Opus of Ripley, with its 12 gates goes...
In the laboratory then
or the back yard, your garden, or on your window sill you will encounter all you need to know. It is about undergoing this knowledge, by making "things" happen or grow. Of course, you aren't doing much of anything (aside the knowing) for the plants do their own growing and the chemicals do their own bonding and breaking. But the observer does have some effect, or so science concurs with this rather mystical principle of wilful intent; by which the sun shines only because of the eye that can see it (when man was eye-less, as a cloud, there was no sun: a rather curious esoteric brain-twister for you, koan-style).
To be lazy is to be unloving (or Gnostic)
To garden is to labour out of love. In meditation our haste and furious mental activity is reigned in and will come to circle around a point of rest, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. First you have to make this pudding though. That is to walk a consistent (8-fold) path of life and test your willing, feeling, thinking as separate forces dosed in appropriate measures for specific tasks. Normally we cloud our judgement (right thiking) with too much emotion (drama, sentiment, melancholy) and iron our feeling out into firm neat pleats that pretend to be spiritually distinguished. We either want too much (stuff) or become to passive. As sons and daughters of Adam and Eve are meant to toil and endure, persevere, even agonise and cope with suffering. The Gnostic is actually quite lazy and despondent to want it otherwise. While the agnostic forgets to cultivate their own garden altogether. Candide was not an atheist but he was pro self-containment and thinking for yourself and trying out your own style, then even if this isn’t the best world of all possible worlds life becomes possible to do (read Voltaire).
This particular edition is examined in greater depth here
Weed, weed and weed some more
Weeds tell us all we need to know about the condition of the soil. In nature things only happen because they can. It's all about potentials being realised. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer in "Weeds and what they tell us" gives us pleasant looking and poisonous weeds, parsleys and goosfoot families to consider as types of indicators on the codition of our soil: there are many ways to classify good from bad plants, but in terms of just what is, Shepherd's purse will simply inform you that your soil is potassium rich and otherwise under fertilised, cattle like it and so do bees. Up to you to grow a patch of it or pull it out.
The words to consider here are
- cultivation and
- worthwhile
Anything you love is worthy of your attention; the tiniest daisy deserves that glass bell jar of the Petit Prince for his rose. Japanese knotweed is a problem, though, that borders on evil! So, not everything is so okay that you can let it all go wild and do what it can. Where do we get our morality from to make such judgement calls, which weed stays, which weed must go?
It's a matter of learning your colours
You will hear too often that spiritual work is all about the light, the light, the light. But Jesus spoke of middle ways and narrow roads, not floods of light and blazing trails of firey sparks. Fire is not light, light is an etheric aspect of the element of air. Light is not anything you can go AHA! about either. It's there and unless it is understood as a formative force, as an entity it remains unknowable to us; as invisible as a white-out canvas of nothingness (or everything leaving nothing for us) until the darkness approaches it, to veil it and show it up in delicate whisps and puffs and cloud-play. Or tight knots, tangles, balls of substantial atmosphere. And sometimes it crystalises, lending its quality to stuff, giving colour to shapes and forms (as in animals and plants, and crystals most purely still). But pure colour lives in entities and can only be known by the imagination. Working with elementals in gardens helps you see that. Or just growing veg to feed your family (organically) will go a long way to clearing your head, too. This clarity is a pre-condition for letting the colours stream through you, untainted by your thoughts.
please be kind also in pest control! Carmine spider mite.
The work of strenthening the light within has its place, especially in art and gardening, when often there may be too much water or soul bleeding the colours into a dreamy sea. The job of head gardener then is to blend the light and darkness in monochrome. Green lends itself particularly well in a garden, and charcoal rubbing for art therapy.
La Louve, France, designed by Nicole de Vesian
A lover of life and a digger in the dirt could survive a stint of raking in a Zen garden and refresh their palet there; but then they would have to come out of the starkness again before their imagination has been stilled into rigid self-negation. Note how the Zen garden in Kyoto, keeps its borders cherry pink and sap-green…. Nobody is locked up in such a garden.
The (anthroposophic) story goes, that we have been guided out from the Garden of Eden by the Archangel Uriel, not just brutally banished (for one dumb mistake. Kafka never bought that either.). We have to consider ourselves exiled from Summer (Uriel= Arch-angel of Summer), where fruit has set and the work has been done. Man is not designed for paradise. It is not a place for rebirth and self-improvement. In fact Paradise sounds dreadfully boring. What would the poor lion eat, if not the lamb? Life is not meant to be a struggle, but creating a heaven on earth (a Paradise garden) does take a bit of toil.
©@sukhasanasister
So crack on and open up the paint-box.