Native By Nature - A New Season, Invites A New Story, and New Beginnings.

Native By Nature – A New Season, Invites A New Story, and New Beginnings.

There are moments in life when the seasons inside us shift long before the weather does. For me, this past year has been one of those rare thresholds — the kind you don’t notice while you’re standing in them, but later understand were quietly reshaping everything. As I prepare to step away from the day-to-day work of tending the Delaware Botanic Gardens, I’ve found myself returning to the roots of my own story, unearthing memories and lessons I’d buried in the soil of a busy life.

Out of that reflection emerged something unexpected: a book.

And now, I get to share it with you.

Native by Nature – Spring: Belonging is the first volume in a new series I’ve carried within me for decades, though I didn’t always know it. It is a memoir, yes — but also a journey through landscapes both literal and emotional. From the hills of mid-Wales, where I first learned to read the world by its seasons, to the gardens and woodlands I’ve tended across continents, to the meadows of Delaware that have shaped my recent years, this book traces how place becomes a teacher, and how nature reveals who we truly are when we let ourselves belong.

Spring is where the story begins.

Not in childhood — but in awareness.

In the moment a person realises they are standing at a crossroads, half a lifetime behind them and half still waiting, held aloft by all the people, experiences, and wild places that shaped them.

In writing this book, I didn’t just revisit the past. I learned to sit with it.

To walk again through the memory of my mother teaching me how to garden under an old apple tree.

To acknowledge the grief of losing her while living an ocean away.

To meet again the volunteers, mentors, and moments that have been teachers in disguise.

And to see, with fresh clarity, how belonging is not a static state but a relationship — a living exchange between what we tend and what tends us in return.

Spring: Belonging is the first step on a path that will continue through three more books in the coming years: Summer: Abundance, Fall: Letting Go, and Winter: Discernment. Together, the series follows the natural arc of a life lived close to the land — growing, thriving, shedding, breaking open, and beginning again. Each volume has its own rhythm, its own weather, its own way of teaching what it means to be human in a world that is always changing.

For now, though, we begin in Spring.

The season of unfurling.

The season of remembering where we come from and choosing, with intention, where we will go next.

Thank you to everyone who has walked with me through this landscape — friends, colleagues, volunteers, readers, and those who have shared early words of encouragement. Your presence in my life has shaped this work more than you know.

If you feel called to join me on this journey, Native by Nature – Spring: Belonging is now available on Amazon in paperback and e-book. I will also be sharing occasional reflections, behind-the-scenes notes, and glimpses into the next chapters here on the blog as the seasons unfold.

Here’s to the stories we carry,

the gardens that shape us,

and the places — seen and unseen — where we finally find our belonging.