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I Learn about Flower Essences

In the early 1970s I began hearing about the Bach essences. Up to that point in my life, I considered myself a rational skeptic. “Don’t believe what you can’t prove” was my mantra. I would scoff at many New Age beliefs that were circulating at the time. I heard you could take a Bach flower essence training in New York, become a practitioner, and give people essences to help with emotional issues. The idea did not click with me, but I began to wonder how remedies could affect emotions and what that had to do with health. A little later, someone gave me some Rescue Remedy during a stressful time, and I had to admit I felt calmer. I also read about the amazing gardens at Findhorn and how people there had grown huge and prolific crops just through their connections to nature spirits, whom they insisted were real, as proven by the outcome of their farming. I found this interesting but, again, I was skeptical and wasn’t sure what I thought about these stories. That was my entire flower essence experience until a decade later.

It wasn’t until the spring of 1987 that my life with flower essences began in earnest. I had recently become a passionate gardener, finding immense joy and satisfaction in watching seeds germinate and plants grow. I lived in a neighborhood in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and had acquired a half-acre lot adjacent to where I lived with my family. The lot was overgrown with weeds and vines and was strewn with yard waste deposited by abutting neighbors. I cleared the lot, dug it up with a garden spade, made piles of compost, and planted herbs, flowers, and food crops. For the next few years, I continued to develop the soil and learned a lot about the plants that grew there. The garden flourished, I flourished.

During that time I also began to learn about the flower essence movement that was beginning in this country. The Flower Essence Society in Nevada City, California, had by then produced a set of seventy-two flower essences from the adjacent Sierra Nevada mountains. Machaelle Small Wright began the Perelandra Gardens in Virginia. She published her astonishing stories of nature spirits and flower essences. Steve Johnson was making essences in Alaska. The now-classic Gurudas book, Flower Essences and Vibrational Healing, had recently been published. All of the essences described in that book of channeled information were then available from a company called Pegasus Products, in Colorado.

At that time my four-year-old daughter, Miranda, developed a rash on the crooks of her elbows and knees that was intensely uncomfortable for her. We tried over-the-counter and prescription creams, homeopathy, allergy testing—nothing worked. I remember looking up eczema in the Gurudas book and found four flower essences that were listed for skin rashes. These were: Luffa, Banana, Saguaro Cactus, and Redwood. I ordered all four from Pegasus Products, mixed them together, gave them to her orally, and applied them directly to her red, puffy, weeping skin.

In three days the rash turned pink and lost its red, weepy, inflammatory nature. In seven days it was gone and never came back. All that remained was some light scarring which eventually went away. From that moment, my skeptical curiosity about flower essences changed into a wild enthusiasm. It is one thing to use an essence to balance a personality type, quite another to see a dramatic effect on a stubborn skin rash.

My whole life changed at that point. My growing interest turned from a hobby into a life passion. I became a dedicated producer, practitioner, teacher, and researcher of flower essences, at first part-time and then full-time just a few years later. Although I had been curious about the Bach essences, I was now drawn into a world of questions and excitement. There was something here that was new and uncharted. I was hooked.

There were a number of extraordinary events that happened to me during those first few years of immersion into the flower essence world. They were not things I could share easily with most people or explain rationally. Here are a few of them:

1. On a clear June evening at the full moon, I woke up in the middle of the

night seeing a thicket of blackberry canes over my head. I rubbed my eyes

to make sure I was not sleeping, but then a voice, clear and distinct, said,

“Go out and make a Blackberry flower essence under the moon.” Up until

then I had never considered making an essence under the moon. But I

went out at 2:00 a.m. and made the essence, staying out in the moonlight

until dawn, feeling no need for sleep. Later I learned that the full moon in

June is called the blackberry moon. I still have that essence.

2. There was a room in my attic where I stored my canning jars of newly

made flower essences. I used to go up to the room and count the new

essences and admire my collection. I had placed a mat in the room for

resting and meditation. One evening I fell asleep on the mat and woke

up to find myself looking at my body, sleeping on the mat. When I

looked over at the jars of essences, I saw small strips of rainbow-like light

over each of them. They were all different. On some, the yellow bands

were brighter. On others, the reds and blues were more prominent. This

was my first out-of-body experience.

3. The garden itself became a strange and otherworldly place for me. I

began to hear sounds coming from the plants when I approached them.

Some were indistinct, like a not-quite-tuned radio station; others were

simple sounds, like a drumbeat or a scratching. A few were audible

voices which would pronounce words in various languages. If I stood

long enough near a plant, in most cases, I would hear or feel something.

I began to see that certain herbs, toxic plants, and weeds emitted the

strongest signals, and so I began preferring to grow plants that I could

hear better. I started a journal, capturing some of the words and phrases

I could discern.

You can be sure that I doubted my sanity more than once during this period. I even went to a psychotherapist to discuss my mental health. He was a horticultural enthusiast and wanted to know what things I was hearing from the plants. I read to him from my notebook a few phrases I had heard. At one point he stopped me and asked what plant said the word that I had just read to him. I showed him a sketch I had made, and he announced that I had heard the Latin name of this particular plant. Although he did not think I was crazy, he admonished me to be careful about who I shared these stories with.

There were many other experiences that reassured me I was on a path and that it was the right one for me. I read everything that was available about flower essences. I took the Flower Essence Society’s flower essence practitioner training in 1990 and began the slow and steady process of building a practice and a collection of essences. In 1993 I quit my day job. In 1995 I went through a painful separation and divorce. Flower essences were becoming the central focus of my life. In fact, I refused to talk about anything else, and people who were bored with the subject of flower essences began to avoid me.

In 1995 flower essence awareness in the Northeastern U.S. got a boost from the work of three women (Kate Gilday, Pam Montgomery, and Gail Ulrich), all herbalists with a growing interest in flower essences. They organized the first Healing with Flowers Conference in Rowe, Massachusetts. This conference became a yearly—and then an every other year—tradition for most of a decade. It also became a new platform for my flower essence work and teaching, which began there.

My experience with my daughter’s rash had impressed me so much that applications of flower essences to physical illness and disease became the focal point of my research throughout my flower essence career, up to today. All I have learned about flower essences started with that surprise and delight of seeing the effect of flower essences on a physical imbalance.