Gardens are an amazing sanctuary. Cultivated, wild, colorful, magical. Gardens have a way of helping one feel lighter in a world that can be heavy at times. Mostly, I find gardens to be magical because I believe nature is magical. Being in nature is the primary reason I enjoy landscape painting, where the forms and color of nature guide me on a journey of discovery of the world around me, while tending to the world inside of me.

I once lived next door to an enchanting neighborhood garden I called the "secret garden." I called it the secret garden because the entrance was practically camouflaged by trellaced vines of flowering clematis. One inside, you knew you entered something special.

The secret garden was lovingly tended by a man named "Pépé." The garden was actually Pépé's work of art. Pépé cultivated this plot as though it was his own nature canvas. Pépé was often in the garden morning, noon, and night. Tending. Weeding, Planting. Pruning. Surveying his work. Reflecting. Talking with visitors.

I think at one time, a house sat on the land where the secret garden lives, but no more. My clue: remnants of a picked fence outline the garden perimeter stopping at its secret entrance. Like walking an organic shaped labyrinth, the secret garden has winding pathways, lined with hand-placed stones that guide you from one nature display to another. At any given point along the path, you might wander past lily ponds replenished with trickling fresh water cycling through a small pump, bird feeders that attract humming birds, little sculptures of animals and gnomes peaking out from the foliage and flowers, butterflies weaving and looping through the air as birds swoop down to feed from the bird feeders and sip water. Portions of the garden were hung with Tibetan prayer flags. Other sections were adorned in strings of white lights strung along tree branches in the garden that would be turned on at dusk. Magical. Peaceful.

Its been over a decade since I lived near the secret garden, Every now and then, I stop by to check on it since it is still in my neighborhood. Pépé doesn't tend the garden anymore. The prayer flags and white lights are gone. The whimsical garden statues have disappeared. The design of the garden is less organic in its layout, but is still well tended as a community garden. In this time of rapid change in the city I have called home all my life, this little garden survives, still with it's winding paths, groupings of wild flowers, trellises and disguised entrance. A delightful respite, nevertheless.