Compost gold in organic garden

A detailed guide to the proper production and use of natural compost contains this volume, which is newly published this year in a revised edition. The sisters of Fulda Abbey have already shared their results and experiences over decades in countless publications, they manage their garden purely organically.

The small self-published garden brochures of the Fulda nuns have been tried and tested for years; the copies distributed a thousand times. Their practical design and concentration on the essentials make them particularly affordable. In addition, the extensive knowledge of the nuns is tangible in these books.

Every garden touches on a longing deep in the human heart: A longing for that primordial garden of happiness in humankind’s early days, a place where one could find security and trust, where the relationship to God, the Creator, was still unbroken. It’s a guess but quite probable that this longing, this memory of the lost paradise, has moved people at all times to create and cultivate gardens.

Besides, what is it that makes a garden – that world full of colours, scents, and delicacies – a veritable if small paradise? Is it a well-thought-out layout? Is it the harmoniously coordinated plants in their different flowering and ripening periods? Is it the loving and meticulous care we give to every centimeter of soil? Or is it the sun, wind, rain, and dew at the right time? All of this is important, sure, but the underlying essence forever remains a miracle, an actual reality no one can reproduce.

Whoever walks through a garden with an awake and loving heart will stand in wonder and admire the miracle: Every year, gardeners joyfully welcome the first winter aconites, which warm the heart on cold January days with their buttercup-yellow blossoms. They wait for February Fairmades, primroses, and violets to awake from hibernation. They spy out until a green shimmer on the land finally indicates that the carrot seeds have sprouted. They rejoice in the bloom of the summer flowers and the arrival of the butterflies. Cautiously, they examine the ripening fruits, take in the scent of the earth and the plants, hear the wind in the leaves – and yet, they know despite all the efforts made, they cannot get one bud to open on their own volition. Nevertheless, when the bud does open and matures into blossom and fruit, this is the ever-new miracle a garden endows us with.

Sister Christa Weinrich, Abbey of St. Mary, Fulda