Garden

Your garden dream often reveals what you are doing with your latent possibilities. It is pointing out whether you have cultivated your abilities, or buried them. Also such dreams often deal with problems we face or questions we ask ourself.

A garden is sometimes a place of love in a dream. In which case it can denote what is growing or dying in your relationship. Another garden theme is connected with activities we do in the garden, like pets we keep, or work done. This connects with what is growing in the area of your natural urges, the pets, and what you are doing that is socially visible, the work in the garden.

Your inner life or feelings; the real you, your memories and growing space, or the personal attributes, potential and characteristics. As such it may indicate your inner quality or problems, the conditions your attitudes and actions have created in your life. Can also indicate the area of growth or change in your life; what you are trying to cultivate in yourself.

It can be about a feelings of peace; being near to your natural self, a meditative attitude. In literature and songs, the garden has often been a place of courtship or love and sex.

The garden can also be a representation of an area of conflict when relatives or neighbours tend to do things that upset your feelings. It is also a private area and so could suggest your are entering someone else’s area.

A pool or swimming pool in the garden usually relates to shared experience, times when you felt at-one with people, or someone in particular. See: Digging; Pool.

One of the things I am seeing at that the moment about symbols and dreams is how beautifully they hold tremendous amounts of information and meaning. I am thinking at the moment about the soil, the garden – they are so rich in meaning. Whatever our forebears did, whether they were deceitful and lying or courageous and strong, whether they had honour or were cowards, whatever they did, and perhaps over time they did everything, their lives were the drama that brought us into being.

Their lives have given us the substance of our body and our personality. We are the heirs of that drama. What we grew from is what they left us. It was the heritage from the past. In dreams this is often represented as a piece of land, a garden. It was the piece of land – is the piece of land – that you inherited. Whatever that land might be, whatever its condition, that is what you have. Whether it is beautifully rich with orchards growing on it, or whether it is covered in rocks and brambles, that is your heritage. Bemoaning the condition or being proud of the condition doesn’t change it. The thing is to take up your tools and develop that land. Let us fertilise it. Let us honour it. We can make it rich. We can enrich it because it is the real stuff and has in it all the potentials of life. Because of that, as rocky or as thorny as it might be, we have all that we need. On that land we can let the tree of life grow.

Beautiful garden: Suggests satisfaction at time of dream; depicts the beauty and perhaps creativity or abundance of your inner feelings.

Overgrown or weeds in garden: Awareness of particular parts of your personality which need working on. Perhaps negative habits need ‘weeding out’.

Square or circular garden: Holds a lot of your gathered wisdom and insights which would be useful if made conscious.

Walled garden: This refers to a state of mind, or a state of being, in which you are aware of your innermost and fundamental self.

Garden pool: Childhood, or early stage in the evolution of ones self consciousness, during which there was a sense of communal awareness; sense of unity with life; ones feelings which may be observable if ones attention is turned inwards – one looks under the surface. See: the self under archetypes; digging; processing dreams. Idioms: Bear garden; up the garden path.

Example: ‘I was working in quite a large garden by my house. A part of the garden was like a little alcove by other buildings. The garden was kidney shaped. I had dug this small plot and was considering how I might relax and sunbathe there. My daughter said I should have worked harder on it – dug it better. I felt intense emotions of resentment and anger at her criticism. I started telling her what a bad time I had in the past. How difficult it was even to work, let alone work hard.’ Beatrice G.

This shows the garden as depicting what one has ‘worked on’ or produced in life. This could mean externally or ones own nature. The daughter is Beatrice’s own self criticism, which pushes her on, though she has a tendency to want to relax ‘in the sun’. This aspect of garden suggests how ‘fruitful’ ones life has been socially and spiritually.

Example: I had a deep sense of being part of everything, and of everything being a part of me. It was very real and I had a spontaneous image of standing in a great garden, an immense place of creation and unity – the Garden of Eden feeling. As this happened I had an insight that most of the people in the world do not have, and perhaps do not want to be a part of this unity.

Idioms: Beer garden; up the garden path.

Useful questions and hints:

How would you describe the garden? Is it tidy, beautiful, a mess, a place to grow and cultivate? Whatever it is, see if you can grasp what it says about your soul.

Do I cultivate or neglect the possibilities and potential in my life?

Does this represent love and other beautiful feelings?

What state of mind does this suggest – peaceful, dangerous, a place to get lost in?

See Summing Up – Using Symbols to Change Life Problems – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams