In 1962 Peter Caddy, manager of the Cluny Hill Hotel in Forres, lost his job, and took his family to the nearby Findhorn Caravan Park to save money.
Here began the remarkable story of the Findhorn community.
Growing Vegetables in the Sand
To eke out his unemployment money, Caddy decided to grow vegetables near the caravan, though he had no prior experience as a gardener.
However, his wife Eileen Caddy and colleague Dorothy Maclean had been living a reflective New Age existence while at the hotel, and they now turned their minds to seeking guidance in how to manage in their straitened circumstances.
The two women were the sensitives of the adults, and began to perceive spiritual guidance, first about trusting that God would provide for their needs, and then more detailed guidance.
Some of this guidance was indeed the practical and would be obvious to a gardener. The caravan park was on the sandy dunes of Findhorn Bay, and had no organic material to speak of, simply sand and gravel on which the occasional gorse bush and couch grass managed to grow.
Peter Caddy scrounged manure, wood ash and foraged for seaweed from the bay. Using all this material he began to replace the sand and gravel of the dunes in his vegetable patch with organic material.
Co-Creating with Nature Spirits and Devas
According to the Findhorn Foundation description of what happened next, Caddy's lack of gardening expertise was compensated in a most unusual way. Dorothy Maclean was meditating, when she contacted a spirit of the plant kingdom, the deva of the garden pea.
This was reported as a consciousness or "being" associated with the pea plants, and Dorothy received practical help from this entity, including how far to space the plants and other information on how to get the best for them.
As the spiritual side of the project expanded, the garden became a conscious co-operation between the forces of Nature and the Findhorn pioneers, and in 1964, the second growing season, the garden yielded red cabbages weighing an awesome 38 pounds and one of 42 pounds - the normal weight is about four pounds.
Findhorn Foundation - a Spiritual Community
The Findhorn Foundation has grown massively from the original community of six people (Peter, Eileen, Dorothy and the Caddys' three children) into an extensive New Age Community, still based near the Findhorn Caravan Park.
Critics of the spiritual account of the remarkable horticultural success point to the fact that a lot of organic material was introduced to replace the sandy soil of Findhorn, so the results are perhaps within the bounds of horticultural experience.
Nevertheless, it seems that something special happened at Findhorn, to provide so well for such tyro gardeners. Either way, the Findhorn Community has grown for over forty years into a well established New Age community that is appreciated by many of the people that visit the community on their week-long familiarisation courses called Experience Weeks, where people experience the Findhorn way of life for a week staying on site.
Related Reading
Machaelle Small Wright was inspired by Findhorn and describes her work at Perelandra in the United States in her book Behaving as if the God In All Life Mattered. Readers may also be interested in the courses available in Self development at the Findhorn Foundation
Sources:
- The Findhorn Garden, Findhorn Community, Findhorn Press 1976.
- Findhorn Community
Richard Mudhar - Originally from London, now enjoying a less hectic pace of life in Suffolk, Richard Mudhar is a keen wildlife sound recordist and ...
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