Review - Who are the flowers in your garden by Julie New

What a beautiful, amazing book! One that I am definitely never letting go!

When I arrived home one afternoon last week, I thought it was my birthday!  A padded envelope with all sparkly stickers had been posted through the door and when I opened the envelope there was a book shaped present, beautifully gift wrapped inside. When I opened it, I discovered the book Who Are The Flowers In Your Garden? which had been sent to me by the lovely Julie New to review.

Julie asks on the back page of the book "How many roles will you play today? Parent, boss, taxi, shoulder-to-cry-on, cook and bottle washer?  When did you last take time to nurture yourself?"

I managed to add a few more job descriptions onto Julie's list and realised that like many parents, I actually don't get an awful lot of time out at all for myself. 

The back cover goes on to say "Imagine youself in a beautiful garden; you are the central tree spreading your branches in the sunshine, appreciating the lovely flowers growing all around you.  Using the powerful metaphor of the garden, this little book will help you to get in touch with those feelings".

Completely intrigued, I started to delve into this gorgeously attractive book.  The cover itself is stunningly designed, with beautiful sunflowers and other brightly colourfed flowers that hypnotise you and I had to drag myself away from being mesmerised by the cover to dip inside.

Beautifully illustrated throughout, with a question at the beginning of each chapter, the words are about nurturing yourself as you would a garden.  It helps you to get in touch with yourself, to identify the weeds in your garden and through amazing and inspirational stories, makes you want to take stock of your life and make changes to help you (in Julie's words) "start flourishing personally and professionally". 

This is an incredibly motivating book, the sort that you'll keep forever in a very handy place and keep dipping in and out of when you feel the need.   I feel incredibly honoured that this book was sent to me and will certainly be helping Julie to spread the word about this potentially life-changing, little miracle that I was sent that will brighten up mine and many other's lives. 

Julie is married to Rob, and is blessed with her own very special flowers, her daughters Amy and Polly.  After working in both nursing and midwifery, she felt that she had more to do in the world even thought she was at the time a single mom nearly at the top of the nursing ladder.  She was determined that she was going to make a difference so became a personal coach specialising in helping men and women to flourish and grow following challenging times.  After 2 years of being extremely busy, she was branded with a bright orange sunflower and the thought came to her that relationships and life itself is very much like a garden. 

You can read more about Julie at her website www.changesforever.com
You can follow Julie on Twitter
You can buy this little treasure of a book by clicking here