341: Mary Reynolds on Care of Earth, Food and Nature

The Urban Farm Podcast with Greg Peterson

Bringing awareness of the beauty of nature.

In This Podcast: Connecting with nature is so natural to Mary Reynolds, that when life got busy and bogged her down to the point that she forgot to make it a priority, she actually felt ‘squished’. Mary’s story of winning the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show was told in the movie Dare to Be Wild. Here we learn more about her special relationship with nature and how she hopes to teach and inspire others to develop their own connection, for the good of all.

Mary grew up on a small mixed farm in Wexford, in the south of Ireland and eventually set up her own company designing gardens in Dublin. A few years later, and having lost the will to live from constantly creating modern gardens, she realized that she could no longer continue shaping land in the same way and thus re-imagined her work to become nature rather than human centered.

She brought her new, still relatively unformed ideas to be showcased at the Chelsea flower show in London where she achieved a gold medal, unusual at the time for a first-time effort. Since that time, Mary has built up quite a cult following in the world of garden design and is considered unique in her field. She eventually decided it was time to rethink the whole relationship we had with land and re-examine what it truly means to design in harmony with nature. This led to her book ‘The Garden Awakening – Designs to Nurture Our Land and Ourselves’

Special note: Her story is told in the film Dare to Be Wild, available on Netflix

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2018/04/03/341-mary-reynolds/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.