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- Noticing and Overcoming the 4 Obstacles to Manifesting Your Dreams
A Lesson from Butchart Gardens: Transforming Rocks to Roses
Written by Jeanine C. Cogan, Ph.D., Certified Leadership Coach
“When one person achieves the unachievable it opens the door for others to do the same.”
The year was 1904. Before her laid a gruesome site. An enormous gash in mother earth that was intolerable to the eye. Jennie Butchart decided to transform the obscene hole that was once used for making concrete into a lavish garden. Many thought her quite mad – as the quarry was barren and solid rock, rock and more rock. “Certainly this quarry is completely and without a doubt incapable of giving birth to a tulip, rose bud or Japanese maple,” people whispered. She was not deterred however and had tons of top soil brought into the quarry by horse and cart. She diligently covered the massive pit of barren rock with mother earth.
Never before had Jennie gardened. Her first planting was a rose bush and a handful of peapods which grew enough to build her confidence. She planted more each month and soon friends wanted to visit. Before long she had many visitors admiring the emerging garden of roses, tulips and Japanese Maples.
Today Butchart Gardens in British Columbia is like no other natural beauty I’ve ever laid eyes on. The garden is simply majestic. There is a path leading to part of the garden that is cavernous, draped with heavy growth of ivy and trees overhead like walking through a canopy. It brings you to the spacious wide open sky and many feet below you - as if you were in a balcony box seat watching the most gorgeous opera – is the Sunken Garden. The lushness, the endless varieties of flowers and trees, a cornucopia of colors, sizes and textures are so pleasing that I find myself squealing like a 6 year old child!
All the first-time-seers are equally stunned into giddy one-word responses, “Wow!” “Whoa!” “Ooooooooh!”
We linger for moment upon moment – like lingering over a glass of Pinor Noir at candlelight – fully enjoying the mesmerizing beauty and the awed reactions and are grateful for this astounding perfection of grace.
What a gift Jennie Butchart gave British Columbia and the world! She gave us this master piece of gardening artwork – transforming rocks to roses. Millions of people visit Butchart Gardens in Canada every year. Jennie also offers us inspiration and chutzpa to go for our seemingly unachievable goals. When one person achieves the unachievable it opens the door for others to do the same.
What is your unachievable goal?
All of us have the capacity to transform rocks to roses. Looking at your life right now – identify a rock – what would it take to transform that rock into a rose garden?
Take one step towards creating that rose garden today.
One step, turns into two steps, and then three. Action begets action. Act now!