In the spring of 2021, my family came down with COVID for the first time. After days inside, I went out to my garden, craving fresh air. That’s when I noticed an unfamiliar plant in the center that I hadn’t planted the year before. Purple flowers. Speckled white leaves. I had a hunch. Back inside, I pulled my guide books from the shelf. Sure enough it was Pulmonaria officinalis! Lungwort. A plant long associated with respiratory support. I remembered then something my mentor had often repeated: “A garden always gives you what you need.” In the 12th-century, Hildegard von Bingen was an abbess, mystic, and herbalist who coined the term ‘viriditas’. She theorized that there was a divine “greening power,” an animating force that gave all living things their moisture, vitality, and capacity to grow and heal. Viriditas flowed through plants, Hildegard wrote, but also through humans, through virtue, through the natural world—even through the soul. At its core, viriditas reflected a deep ...