Create an indoor sanctuary

Cooped up in my apartment on blistering winter afternoons, I used to get lonely for moist earth and bright flowers. Canadians, like Scandinavians, are more often afflicted by Seasonal Affective Disorder than their American and Southern European friends. At northern latitudes we have fewer daylight hours to stimulate our brains in winter so we get depressed, as studies have shown. I also believe we let inclement weather and our own walls and curtains cut us off from Nature.

We can't afford that disconnection. That's why I have brought living things inside my home. There's more to indoor gardening than silk flowers on the coffee table, or propping a lonely cactus on the window sill. Living plants and animals have always surrounded us, and they can improve any home. An indoor sanctuary will keep your air cleaner, refresh your mind and body, and connect you more deeply with the rhythms of life. This is true not only for landless apartment dwellers like myself, but also those winter refugees of the backyard who spend their Saturday afternoons pining over seed catalogues.

I used to garden on two acres of old meadow. I acutely felt my loss of connection to the soil when my marriage ended. Financial factors have forced me to live in apartments ever since.

Over the next couple of years several books fed my longing, all of which I highly recommend:  The Sanctuary Garden by Christopher Forrest McDowell and Tricia Clark-McDowell, Cultivating Sacred Space: Gardening for the Soul by Elizabeth Murray, and  The Re-enchantment of Daily Life by Thomas Moore. They raised my awareness that I needed the environment not just for physical survival, but for the thriving of my soul.

I became intrigued with the McDowells' concept of the hearth, a part of the home where members of both family and community come to share stories, songs and ideas, pass skills to younger generations, and refresh their souls.

Their book goes on to say: "Your sanctuary garden, whether you realize it or not, is like a home, an extended family of multitudinous varieties of life forms. It is a welcome hearth."

My apartment at the time had only a north-facing balcony. Sunlight never entered my living space, and my state of mind was gloomy and anxious. The few plants that would grow there did not engage me, and they languished from neglect. I started a garden at the cottage property I share with my parents, but that was something I could only enjoy for a few weeks of the

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