Contemplation - Dialogue - Creation
Mary's House Community
The Giant’s Garden
The Giant’s Garden is a small piece of land set aside for contemplative living, a place where simple acts of planting and tending become part of an inner journey: waking up, softening, and learning to live from the deeper self.
Rooted in the Christian wisdom stream, the garden offers a gentle invitation:
to step out of the restless mind and into the present moment,
to notice how the divine meets us through the natural world,
to discover that transformation often arrives in the smallest beginnings
to join with others in practicing meditation and other contemplative activities
Within the Giant’s Garden you will find
• quiet corners for contemplation,
• beds for vegetables and flowers,
• a circular gathering space,
• and a shelter for eating and talking together on retreat days.
Everything here is small, intentional, and shared. We come not to perfect the garden but to be shaped by it — to practise presence, to learn gentleness, to remember our place in the wider web of creation.
Above all, the Giant’s Garden is a place of becoming:
a space where the heart can rest, open, and slowly grow into the likeness of Love.
Why the Giant's Garden?
The garden takes its name from The Selfish Giant, where winter yields only when the Giant opens his gate. It’s a parable of what happens when the small, defended self relaxes its grip: life returns, in its fullest sense.
In the Christian wisdom tradition, transformation often begins in just this way — not by striving, but by allowing. When we loosen the ego’s tight boundaries, a deeper self can emerge: more whole, more connected, more capable of love.
The Giant’s Garden is a reminder of that gentle work.