I did my Experience Week at the end of January 1977. One day I was walking from the Park building through the Central Garden and as I came abreast of the large pine tree by Ross Stewarts bungalow the words came to me clear as a bell:”This is the Findhorn Garden. Nourish the seed.” I took especial note of that because I wasn’t given to hearing voices in my head other than my own.

I joined the Community in 1978, married in 1979 and had a wee baby girl November ’80. Gabrielle was raised in the end bungalow opposite the craft studios on Pineridge. She loved climbing trees from a tender age and with her little friends made full use of all the Park offered.

When she was about five years old I was again walking down the same path in the Central Garden, unaware that she and a friend were sitting on a branch of the tree by Ross Stewarts. Totally hidden from view by greenery she greeted me chirpily with “Hello Mummy!” It was a sweet surprise and I realised that I had, indeed, nourished the seed!

Gabrielle left Findhorn for a new life in Sweden when she was ten. In her mid-20s she was invited back to co-focalise an Eco-village training course with Craig Gibsone and Zoe Isaksen. In addition to her history with Findhorn she’d earned a First Class degree (one of four of the original Moray Steiner School pupils to do so, and the only girl) in Environmental Management, so everyone was delighted that she turned out to be a natural. She subsequently stayed on for well over a decade to work intensively and highly successfully in many areas of the Foundation.

The Angel of Findhorn knows its seeds.

Amanda Haworth