Welcome to the Garden
It’s 6am mountain time in Antigua, Guatemala, and up a winding road, nestled in the mountainside is a small village called San Cristobal al Alto, home to the Tierra & Lava garden and workshop. All around the garden are signs that mother nature is just starting to wipe away the sleep from the corner of her eyes; dew collects on the various leaves of trees; bees start their busy work pollenating the flowers for the day; birds sing-song in their different languages.
Lucy Ashman rises early and begins her day with a cup of tea, made with leaves and herbs from her garden. She wakes up her three children, Oli, Orrin and Kali and gets them situated for their online school for the day. After the sun has risen above the mountains across the valley she begins her work.
Every day is different in the garden. Like people, some plants need tending to more than others. And then there are those that just kind of mind their own business. Lucy makes her rounds down the winding natural pathway around the property. It feels as though the deeper you get into the garden, the more the outside world seems to fade away. This is Lucy’s peace. On the 2 acre property there is a small workshop that has everything she needs to create her special tinctures and formulas using 80% whole plants from her garden. This is where the alchemy, which seems a lot like magic, for Tierra & Lava products happens.
Lucy, and all of Guatemala for that matter, is lucky with their soil – they happen to be living on the most volcano-dense land there is in the world (37 for that matter), which means their soil is like none-other and is jam-packed with nutrients that promote the lush growth you see in the region. No matter where you stand in her garden, you can see at least one of the three volcanoes on the horizon. This vista serves as a reminder of nature’s all-powerful role on earth. It is humbling to feel small next to such mighty feats of nature.
The nutrient-rich soil combined with the fresh, unpolluted mountain air the Tierra & Lava garden gets at 300m above the city of Antigua makes for a pretty special place. When Lucy first visited and settled in Guatemala she knew it was special too, and that’s part of the reason why she started Tierra & Lava – she wanted to share this special corner of the earth with the rest of the world.