23 May PROPOSAL FOR A GARDEN OF PEACE IN REYKJAVÍK: PLANTING THE IMPOSSIBLE
By Laura Formentini, Honorary Ambassador of The Garden of Peace for Children’s and Animal Rights
From Spirit to Vision
From May 8 to 11, 2025, I took part in the Spirit of Humanity Forum in Reykjavík, Iceland—a moving gathering of leaders, thinkers, and changemakers, all united by a shared commitment to restoring dignity, compassion, and spiritual wisdom in global leadership.
One question accompanied me throughout the forum:
What does it mean to be a good ancestor for the future?
To truly regenerate the world, we must break free from linear thinking.
Don’t start from the past, nor even the present.
Start from a desired future.
🌱 What does healing look like in the future?
🌍 What kind of world do we want to make possible through our presence?
🌾 What seeds can we plant today?
These reflections are at the heart of The Garden of Peace, a movement now preparing to propose the creation of a Garden of Peace in Reykjavík to the relevant authorities.
Cultivating the Impossible
In Iceland, the climate and environment are not naturally suited for olive trees to grow and bear fruit. But we’ve chosen to challenge those climatic limits—and that’s possible only by creating a specially equipped greenhouse capable of providing the conditions needed for the olive tree to thrive and for a new Garden of Peace to be born.
It may sound like a wild idea, but as Iceland’s President Halla Tómasdóttir said:
“To be catalysts for a different world, we must be creative… and a little crazy.”
President Halla spoke of a different Iceland: a nation led by a woman, inspired by non-competitive values, grounded in inner peace and stillness as a transformative force.
In an age of noise, hyperconnection, and generational anxiety, silence is not a luxury—it is survival.
It’s all one journey.
And the journey leads to peace.
Global Seeds of Regeneration
The Gardens of Peace are global seeds of regeneration, spaces where memory transforms into life, and peace is cultivated as a daily gesture, shared by different cities yet united by the same desire.
We are part of Team Humanity.
And the Gardens of Peace are our way of anchoring this vision to the Earth, one sacred place at a time.
Following Reykjavík, invitations have arrived from:
- Palestine
- London
- Hiroshima
- Sarajevo
Cities that carry on their shoulders memories of pain and courage.
There, we will plant living promises, spaces where memory meets regeneration, where peace is not just an aspiration, but a concrete act.
The Garden in Reykjavík can only grow within a greenhouse, but its roots will stretch far beyond its walls.
Because true peace, once planted with intention, grows even where everyone said it could not.