From Florida to the Garden School
Altogether I worked in Cullerne Gardens for 13 years, pretty much 5 days a week, 6 hours a day, 11 of those years with Fred.
Altogether I worked in Cullerne Gardens for 13 years, pretty much 5 days a week, 6 hours a day, 11 of those years with Fred.
Cullerne Gardens is a much loved place for many Community members, past and present. This Topic covers the early years from the purchase of the property in 1978 to 1992 when Cullerne Gardens was fully integrated as a Findhorn Foundation work department.
The first time I remember Cullerne was during my Experience Week in 1979. A tour of Cullerne was included in that week, and I was deeply impressed. I joined the Cullerne Garden School and later co-focalised the garden.
The 1988 Orientation Group met up for a 30 year reunion, online and in person, completing with full hearts giving thanks for the many gifts of the last few days and the last three decades.
This report written by Maureen Smith was found in the Cullerne Gardners Library.
About 42 years ago Michael Winter from Birmingham first met Josephine Wootton from Lower Hutt, NZ, at Cluny Hill. On the occasion of our Ruby Wedding Anniversary, we are just wanting to record our gratitude to the Findhorn Foundation for its vision and hope, to Erraid for being an awesome place to spend a Scottish winter and to the Iona Abbey Community.
In 1988 the personnel department asked me to take over as focaliser. It was a bit absurd, I was a teacher by trade and a novice in gardening, but as a dutiful student of the Foundation, I said "yes" to service.
In the beginning was the garden, and the garden continues, but the forms that express this spirit are today far different from those of nineteen years ago.
From 1978, around the nucleus of Fred and Dick Barton, the idea of a 'school within a garden' has grown and taken shape at Cullerne, a ten-acre property adjacent to the caravan park overlooking Findhorn Bay.
As I look out the window at the Park garden, the trees are bending with the gale-force gusts of wind, and rain is pelting down. How often we view our environment as though framed by the weather, and how often people have viewed Findhorn as though framed by the garden.