A garden can be strong medicine to nurture and shape the soul. Gardens have a way of seeping in to your soul and you find yourself enjoying the air and watching for miracles. In a hurried and distracted world we need garden sanctuaries, places that ground us. We need Quiet Gardens."

Many of our churches in London have beautiful gardens and churchyards which are open to members of the public on a daily basis. These spaces are used by people seeking peace and quiet, a place to reflect and pray, or simply rest and breathe deeply. Our relationship with nature is just as important in built-up areas as in the depths of the countryside and I hope that our churches can continue to offer this gift to everybody as we all seek a greener future.

The Quiet Garden Movement has been gently cultivating and tending an organic network – a flowering! – of set-aside, sensitively curated spaces in which anyone can come, without agenda, to be still. And to be restored. And to be enlivened. And perhaps to become part of the active solution, too, at this time of climate crisis.
It’s my very great joy to be part of a uniquely welcoming, divinely spacious, and deeply earthed movement, for such a time as this.