Rooms of our own

There’s something humbling about how gardens demand patience. You bury seeds in darkness and then wait. Weeks may pass before the faintest sprout appears, if it does at all. You learn to water, to tend, to trust. To garden is to practice a kind of faith in cycles that don’t care for modern society’s pace.

It’s no wonder Persephone is a gardeners favourite mythical figure. Beyond being the goddess of springtime, she too belonged to the underground – swallowed into shadow before returning in bloom. Planting is a myth enacted in miniature through absence, descent and finally emergence into life.

Gardens, like nature, offer stillness in a culture that craves immediacy. The patience itself becomes the work. You tend not just the soil, but your own restlessness. And then, a single curved stem breaking the surface – fragile and unstoppable all at once. The ordinary miracle of something hidden becoming seen.

To toil in the garden is to believe in return, renewal and the beauty of things that take their time. The Persephone ritual – repeated every season, what sleeps will rise again.