The Garden of the Gods; a Sri Lankan folk tale that transcends myth

The Horton Plains, when the Garden of the Gods appears once in twelve years.

They say twelve years is a single day in the realm of gods. In a Sri Lankan folk tale, when a young celestial being fell in love with an earthly woman, this strange time-dilation became the premise of his heartbreak. In this story, we share the folktale The Garden of the Gods and how it entwines with reality in a natural phenomenon that takes place every twelve years.

In the highlands of the island, there was a village girl of great beauty. Every few days, she went into the forest to gather firewood. Her elders said to her, “Do not tarry; the forest is not a place to linger; return quickly, that you may assist your sister.” 

But the girl loved the forest. She gazed long upon the trees, and she wandered about seeking flowers.

At that time, a young god came down to the Earth. When the god beheld the maiden, he desired to draw near to her. Seeing that she was pleased at the sight of wild flowers, the god thought, “By flowers shall I keep her here for a long time.”

Then the god took the heavenly blossoms from the garland that he wore, and scattered them upon the hills and plains. Straightaway, those heavenly flowers spread out upon the earth, covering it in colours brighter than any flowers of this world. The green of the highland forest became a garden of the gods.

When the maiden came to gather wood, she saw the countless flowers, and her heart was filled with wonder. She forgot her household tasks and wandered long in the garden of the gods. 

Then the god took the form of a young man, fair to see, and he drew near to her. He spoke kindly, and she was pleased. At parting, he said, “I will return on the morrow. In this garden, we shall meet again.” 

But one day among the gods is twelve years on earth. Thus, though the maiden waited through days and through months, the god did not appear. At length she thought, “That day in the heavenly garden was but a dream,” and she gave it no more heed.

Yet the god was true to his word. On the morrow of the gods, after twelve earthly years, he came again to the highlands. The garden of the gods sprang forth upon the hills and the plains, in colours and in beauty without measure.

To this day, every twelfth year, the hills are clothed in blossoms, and the divine garden reappears on earth. There the young god waits, ever hopeful, for his earthly love.

Thus it is said: the garden of the gods still appears and vanishes, not to be possessed by human nor deity. To desire beauty is human, even divine. But to seek to possess it is folly.

Folk tales are often dismissed as stories unworthy of documentation. They rarely entered libraries until anthropologists, scholars, and revered intellectuals like Carl Jung began to expose their depth as tales springing from universal symbols common to humankind and the reservoirs of our collective unconscious. This story, The Garden of the Gods, not only draws from that shared well of wisdom, but it also entwines with a vivid natural phenomenon that takes place with uncanny resemblance to the folk tale. 

This happens in Sri Lanka’s world heritage site, Horton Plains, in the central highlands, where the tale is said to originate. Here, every twelve years, Strobilanthes species erupt in a synchronized mass flowering that transforms the highlands into a spectacle still described by locals as ‘the garden of the gods.’ As many as 33 Strobilanthes species take part, with at least 30 endemic, some critically endangered.

Strobilanthes kunthiana is one of the endangered species that takes part in the synchronized flowering. The mass flowering gives the Strobilanthes species a better chance at pollinating and surviving predators.

Folk tales usually spring up as unremarkably as wildflowers and disappear without getting recorded. They were transmitted by grandparents charged with containing restless children through stories, so that afternoons in households could remain sane. Sometimes those children retold the tales when they grew older, but most slipped quietly out of memory, especially as oral traditions changed. Rarely were they written down, unless an anthropologist or occasional story-keeper stumbled upon one too remarkable to let vanish; too wondrous to be forgotten.

This folk tale sparked lifelong wonder in those who first heard the story as children, only to later see it come true across the Horton Plains: myth confirmed by nature, wonder given form. For those alive when botanists explained the twelve-year flowering cycle of Strobilanthes in the 20th century, the awe deepened further with science and story converging. The tale will stir still more wonder for future generations who may never see all 33 species bloom again across Sri Lanka’s highlands, as many now hover on the edge of extinction.

Stories are timeless vessels of wonder. They are not escapes from reality but frames through which reality reveals itself. The Garden of the Gods is one such frame. It's a folk tale that carries—through myth, ecology, loss, and longing—the truth that beauty cannot be possessed. This is how stories distill truth into forms that are more accessible, memorable, and enduring. 

Letters are not iconic signs; they’re arbitrary symbols we trust.

This food for thought started when I accidentally stumbled upon a story about a 9-year-old prodigy taking college-level neuroscience classes. Particularly when I read that he started reading at the age of 2… he says he picked up the words naturally. It made me wonder how we recognize symbols, and why we trust their meaning.

Letters are symbols; they are a code whose meaning must be learned. A long time ago, they may have resembled something. Most, if not all, commonly used alphabets now function through social convention or cultural agreement.

The letter “A” doesn’t look like an “apple”

Learned association, not a visual metaphor.

Letters are what we call “symbolic" signs; in contrast to “iconic”, which resemble what they represent, for example, a male/female silhouette bathroom sign, or an “indexical” sign, which points to something by connection—for example, a crossed cannabis leaf to signify no smoking marijuana. 

Some people have exceptional pattern recognition. They notice recurring shapes, sounds, and contexts. It seems to come more naturally for them than others, like the 9-year-old prodigy in the story I read. But generally speaking, it’s a skill that can be practiced. If exposed to consistent visual-verbal pairings (like signs, books, or subtitles), they may intuitively map the symbol-sound through repetition. More practice, more understanding. This is the foundational logic of apprenticeship and education. The apprentice or student must be given the key to decoding the symbols.  

Is this Irving Penn photograph of Miles Davis' trumpet hand iconic or symbolic?

If letters are arbitrary, then reading is not just decoding—it’s trusting a system of shared meaning. Symbolic signs allow for abstraction; they allow us to communicate complex ideas and point to concepts that are difficult to signal; they describe the shapeless. They let us count, measure, and imagine. A flag doesn’t look like a country. Is Jasper Johns' “Flag” a painting, or a symbol? A cross doesn’t look like God. But we feel their weight because we’ve invested them with meaning. Is the cross sacred because of its form, or because of what we’ve invested in it? Ironically, they’re meaning can easily be forgotten. We must remember what the symbol stands for. We must believe others will interpret them similarly. And we must share enough cultural ground for the symbol to resonate. 

When we read, we enter a symbolic order.

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Food for thought.

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Using sound + image to signify complex feelings.

From a graphic design perspective, sound behaves like a compositional tool to define rhythm, spacing, and emphasis and tune meaning.

Sound creates an emotional topography that influences the Rasa of the story. In my last Food for Thought, I referenced a Mike Mills documentary as an example of how sound changed the meaning and emotion of a story.

Mike Mills' 1999 documentary AIR: Eating, Sleeping, Waiting and Playing approach to telling a story is all resonance.

I found the ambient sounds carried more narrative weight than the beautiful arthouse black and white footage alone. Sound can play a big role in a story. Pay attention to how much space it takes in the narrative. Its potential to emphasize can also be distracting. Because sonic decisions change the texture, contrast, rhythm, and space of a story. We use it to strengthen and weaken the meaning of an image.

In graphic design, texture adds physicality: paper grain, halftones, or metallic gradients. I’ve seen sound behave similarly in a story. Layering them creates an atmosphere that positions the meaning of what we see. I find it to be a wonderful way of directing objective reality with emotional flavour, like overlaying handwritten notes on a photograph.

It tunes the semiotics of an image.

Not all situations require such a boost in meaning. I tend to supplement images with sound, mostly to convey complex ideas. Particularly, symbolic and emotional subtleties that are hard to distil from an image alone.

Think of sound as editorial emphasis.

Sound anchors a mood in the same way colour can. When paired, they can be very emotive. They are mood2; colour and sound form a kind of emotional syntax. They are fun to play with and an effective way to communicate complex emotions.

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Food for thought