A Weekend at Schumacher College.
Gardening as a Spiritual Practice is a weekend gathering led by Satish Kumar and June Mitchell, with a contribution from Colum Pawson. It offers an invitation to slow down, to listen, and to reconnect with the living soil as teacher, companion, and guide.
We garden, of course, to grow food. Yet gardening is also a form of active meditation, a quiet, attentive practice through which we enter into relationship with the living world. To garden is to cultivate kinship with the soil, to move from ideas of ownership towards belonging. The land is no longer an object to be used, but a living presence with which we are in relationship. The land does not belong to us; we belong to the land.
"When we garden with spiritual consciousness, the land is no longer a commodity but a community. Gardening with love nourishes not only the body, but also the mind and the spirit. It gifts us joy, grounding, and health, alongside the food that sustains life.”
Satish Kumar
Inspired by spiritual, ecological, and cultural traditions — from Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual understanding of agriculture through Biodynamic farming, to the Shumei movement in Japan founded by Mokichi Okada, and Vinoba Bhave’s practice of Spiritual Gardening in India — as well as contemporary movements such as agroecology, permaculture, organic agriculture, and no-dig gardening, the weekend weaves together reflection, conversation, and hands-on engagement. Together, these traditions remind us that when we garden with love and awareness, the soil nourishes not only the body, but also the heart, the mind, and the spirit.
Over the course of the weekend, participants are invited to share in learning and celebration, cultivating joy, care, and reverence for the earth. Together, we will explore how spiritual gardening can support personal wellbeing, ecological renewal, and a deeper sense of belonging in a living world.
A Weekend at Schumacher College.
Gardening as a Spiritual Practice is a weekend gathering led by Satish Kumar and June Mitchell, with a contribution from Colum Pawson. It offers an invitation to slow down, to listen, and to reconnect with the living soil as teacher, companion, and guide.
We garden, of course, to grow food. Yet gardening is also a form of active meditation, a quiet, attentive practice through which we enter into relationship with the living world. To garden is to cultivate kinship with the soil, to move from ideas of ownership towards belonging. The land is no longer an object to be used, but a living presence with which we are in relationship. The land does not belong to us; we belong to the land.
"When we garden with spiritual consciousness, the land is no longer a commodity but a community. Gardening with love nourishes not only the body, but also the mind and the spirit. It gifts us joy, grounding, and health, alongside the food that sustains life.”
Satish Kumar
Inspired by spiritual, ecological, and cultural traditions — from Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual understanding of agriculture through Biodynamic farming, to the Shumei movement in Japan founded by Mokichi Okada, and Vinoba Bhave’s practice of Spiritual Gardening in India — as well as contemporary movements such as agroecology, permaculture, organic agriculture, and no-dig gardening, the weekend weaves together reflection, conversation, and hands-on engagement. Together, these traditions remind us that when we garden with love and awareness, the soil nourishes not only the body, but also the heart, the mind, and the spirit.
Over the course of the weekend, participants are invited to share in learning and celebration, cultivating joy, care, and reverence for the earth. Together, we will explore how spiritual gardening can support personal wellbeing, ecological renewal, and a deeper sense of belonging in a living world.