The Central Garden

The Central Garden is a powerful metaphor that draws on an image of the garden in the center of many old Mexican haciendas. A place overflowing with life, where you can enter through any of the many arched doorways that lead into it.

In this metaphor, coined by World Cafe co-founder Juanita Brown, the doorways are different participatory practices. Once we step through them we enter the shared space of our common work.

“It’s the meta-pattern, the meta operating system – what we’ve come to call “conversation as a co-evolutionary force (and as a force for conscious evolution)” – that I want to dedicate my own life to making more visible and actionable. The varied methodologies as well as our hosting capacities and practices, in my view, are simply windows into the awareness of and living within this deepest pattern of all that connects us to a common ground together in our lives and work…. beyond all methods and practices, powerful as they may be individually and/or in combination.”
~ Juanita Brown

At the World Cafe, we feel strongly about the need to work together – especially in these challenging times. It’s clear we need everyone, and that together we are wiser than we are alone.

Here are some resources to explore the Central Garden metaphor and the ideas it captures more fully.

ARTICLES

Notes on a Central Garden or Jardin Central
Original notes from Juanita Brown and Kathy Jordain, later updated and augmented at Juanita’s request by Amy Lenzo.

The Central Garden: An Invitation
Building on the original notes above, this piece was co-written by Amy Lenzo and Rowan Simonsen as a chapter in the 3rd Edition of The Change Handbook (currently being compiled as a Collaborative Change Library & App by Nexus4Change)

VIDEOS

Juanita Brown
Speaking on World Cafe as Method, Metaphor, & Movement: In the Central Garden, at The Community Table Launch, November 2019

Rowan Simonsen
Speaking on Beehive Productions & the Central Garden, at The Community Table Launch, November 2019

We Are Wiser Together
A video poem written by Amy Lenzo, narrated by participatory practitioners all over the world, and edited by FireHawk Hulin for the World Cafe 20th Anniversary Celebrations, 2015