TOWARDS A NETWORK OF GARDENS FOR PEACE

Everyone who works the land and respects the environment is also working for peace.

Even victory gardens, as they are called when conflict jeopardises our very survival, are still, and always will be, gardens for peace.
 
At this historic juncture, when the very foundations of our economy are being called into question and notions of value are changing to such an extent that land is beginning to be seen as a more secure asset, the time has come to create a network among all of us who believe that organic farming is good, as well as serving to preserve beauty and health.
 
There is a need to get back to basics, to relearn the ABC of our relationship with Nature. This is precisely why we started with school gardens: open-air classrooms for learning a new way of being  through which, instead of remaining mere consumers, we can become co-creators of life. And, by practising self-sufficiency as much as possible, heed the pulse of inner freedom.  A garden, a thicket, a vegetable-patch transform schools into something living, something to be taken care of.
  
From schools we started looking further afield – to therapeutical gardens, community gardens, gardens within prisons: spaces where, at the same time as tending flowers and vegetables, the garden can be discovered as an ideal place for building a whole network of relations between Nature, the environment and the community, as well as helping to nurture inner peace.
 
We thus propose the establishment of a Gardens for Peace Network  with the aim of keeping in contact and sharing information on a variety of initiatives. And, last but not least, to help us realise that we are very far from isolated in our desire to cultivate this common garden of ours which bears the humble name of Earth.