What do you see from your living room window? Or from your kitchen or bed­room? Views are a personal matter, but we all enjoy a beautiful one. In fact, many of us work hard to create one. What do I mean? Your garden. It’s that green space between the walls of your house and the Great Beyond. Maybe it’s not that big – perhaps you have cows grazing three metres from your bedroom window! Maybe all you have is a concrete walkway separating you from the neighbouring flat or the supermarket car park next door. But perhaps you’re blessed with metre upon metre of her­baceous borders, of glorious flowering shrubs; or a sea of daffodils, bluebells and tulips every spring. But whatever it is you look out on – and I agree – some of us face a considerable visual challenge – most of us have a natural urge to make something beautiful of it.

Back when I was a child our mothers used to spend a lot of time gardening. It was an expected part of a housewife’s routine, especially if you were a farmer’s wife. Many women loved their gardens, and took genuine pleasure in arranging and maintaining them. Ladies used to meet at each others’ places for afternoon tea, then go on a guided tour led by their hostess. She would show them her garden’s highlights, and dig out cuttings of herbaceous plants for her guests to take home. This doesn’t happen so much anymore. (In part, I’m relieved – my garden doesn’t stand close-up scrutiny. I don’t have time to remove every weed; so I’m all for the “it’s all about the view” approach...) Nowadays people spend heaps of money on “hard landscaping” instead – paths, patios and walls that look good as outdoor spaces but require little maintenance. What plants they have are usually purchased from nurseries follow­ing plans drawn up by their landscapers. However, I believe there’s still plenty of scope for gardeners at home to learn by experimenting; and to exercise creativ­ity in the way they shape their outdoor spaces with trees, shrubs, flowers and vegetables. Let’s consider some of the wider ramifications of this.

A Biblical Theme⤒🔗

Gardening is as old as the creation. When God made the world in perfect form, he placed his perfect man and woman in a garden, and told them to “cultivate it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15, NASB). This is what interests me. Even before the fall gardening was an activity that required effort. Adam and Eve lived in a garden, and this, not a wilderness, was their perfect, unspoiled, pre-sin world. The back-to-nature thinking that characterised the Romantic movement in the 18^th century, and still underlies the green movement in our day, assumes that “natural”, uncultivated and untouched­-by-man is the ideal. Wild is preferable to farmed or gardened. But that is not the biblical idea. Throughout the Bible we see that a cultivated landscape is every bit as good as an untouched world. Or­dered, selected, tended and planned are good. Design and symmetry are good, too. As gardeners living in the light of Bible truth, we can form, select, tend, prune, thin and trim back. We can im­pose order and be creative in the ways we shape our outdoor spaces – just as God is creative.

However, as we know, creation was marred by the fall. When Adam and Eve chose to eat from the only tree in the garden they were forbidden to eat from, it was not only their hearts and the hearts of all their descendants which were twisted out of shape. The creation was subjected to death and decay, while they themselves were thrown out of the garden. From now on their work was going to be thwarted by difficulties of every kind. Thorns and thistles would smother the plants Adam tried to grow: gardeners ever since have faced the trials of weeds, pests and diseases. Without sin there would have been no locust plagues, droughts, fungal infestations, nor the creeping stranglehold of twitch. I think of this every morning that I see the damage to my roses from a night­time possum rampage; or watch my daffodils and irises shrivel in the heat of a blistering Canterbury nor’wester. It is hard work, and sometimes discouraging work, gardening in a fallen world.

The writers of biblical literature knew all this; and it’s woven into their imagery and symbolism. Droughts and locust plagues were a sign of God’s discipline of a stubborn and rebellious people; while fruitful gardens, olive orchards and vineyards indicated his blessing. Gardens in Bible times were also places of beauty and refreshment. In the Middle East, gardens have always been soothing spaces of water, greenness and beauty in a hot, arid climate. People go to a lot of trouble to create them. Some gardens were legendary: the hanging gardens of Babylon were one of the wonders of the ancient world. They made the city quite fabulously attractive. The garden motif extends to the end of the Bible story, as there is something quite garden-like about the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem. It has trees, and a refreshing river running through it. Plants are part of its beauty.

Gardens, you could say, are basic to life. The Bible is full of them. People in all times, all over the world, in almost every culture under the sun, have gardened. They grow things, both to eat and in order to create beautiful outdoor spaces. There are gardens on the grand civic scale, built and maintained by royalty, or by governments on behalf of the citizenry through their taxes. There are gardens created and tended lovingly by families in their own modest backyards. Fashions in gardening come and go – and right now, it is probably waning as a lifestyle pursuit. The less time families have, the less likely they are to want to spend time digging, weeding and tending plants. So it’s a reasonable question to ask – is it worthwhile to garden? Why should I bother doing it?

Why Garden?←⤒🔗

The first reason, as I see it, is that by creating a garden we’re making that place our family lives in, and where our guests come to visit us, a lovelier place to be. When the family comes home, or when visitors arrive, they have to walk from their car to our door. What greets their eyes? Do they see colourful flowers, arranged to match the house, and each other? Does the design of the garden draw their eye around corners, offering tantalizing glimpses of beauty waiting to be explored? To me, gardening is really exterior decorating. It’s an extension of what we do inside the house when we arrange furniture and choose colours for our walls. To be honest, I don’t always enjoy gardening. Weeding, dead-heading and trimming off died-back herbaceous growth in the autumn can be a real chore; especially as you know it will all have to be done over again in a few weeks’ time! But the results, viewed on a dewy spring or summer morning as the sun is rising, makes it all worthwhile. The pleasure’s repeated when your guests arrive for an evening barbecue. Together with you, they get to enjoy the beauty in the soft light of evening.

It’s also good for the soul to watch things grow. Each time you see a small, green shoot emerge from the soil and grow into a mature plant you are watch­ing the Creator at work. It causes us to wonder at the complexity of his design. It is so refreshing to wander among the flowers in the stillness of early morning, watching to see which buds are open­ing; or to sniff the heady perfume from flowers that have spent a hot afternoon soaking up the sun. Surely such gorgeous scents are a gift from God. We’re also reminded of the brevity of life when we see how quickly a beautiful flower is gone. (How glad we should be of God’s Word which, in contrast, lasts forever). The constant battle with weeds and drying wind; and pests like opossums, birds and white butterflies, all remind us that sin has distorted the creation, mak­ing it creak and groan as it waits to be renewed. We enjoy beautiful things in this life; but we also endure sin and suf­fering; and we shall all die. Our gardens remind us of these things, daily.

Thirdly, gardens provide food for our families and guests. What we grow in our own gardens has such a short distance to travel to our tables – it is fresher. It tastes better, and it is so satisfying to produce a little of what we eat ourselves. Growing it yourself means you know what has gone into it – and onto it. It’s fun to plan and order seeds in the winter, to plant them in spring, watch them grow and then to eat the lettuces, carrots, beetroot, salad greens or whatever else comes from your garden. Studying the needs and growing habits of plants is not only interesting, it’s very useful. By training children in growing things, we’re teaching them all kinds of useful lessons, biological and otherwise. I remember taking part in the annual school garden competition run by the Department of Education year after year when I was in primary school. It was a great learning experience. Even the simple matters of having to keep accurate records; hav­ing to hoe the garden regularly; being responsible for watering my garden (if I didn’t, no one else did – and it would suffer!) taught me disciplines my parents were delighted about...

Gardening also helps keep you fit – and in a way that is useful and produc­tive. I must admit, I sometimes wonder about the wisdom of spending a lot of time and money working out in a gym, when one can also keep healthily fit by digging in a garden or by pushing a lawn mower around the lawn. At least one has produced something for the time invested! (Now, I know that not all your individual muscles may have been as beautifully toned as if you went to the gym and used all the specialised equipment, but, think of the vegetables and the flowers...) And as for lawns, I’ve been in love with them ever since I saw striped, velvety-green perfection at the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Something like that has to be worth a little perspiration!

Are there any downsides to garden­ing? Of course. It’s always possible to become obsessed with your garden, and to devote too much time and money to it at the expense of other, more important activities. But I think most gardeners find, in the end, that reality and a sense of perspective return when you face the difficulties of working with nature in a fallen world. Things go wrong, plants die, roses are ruined by fungi and let­tuces are eaten by birds. Such things tend to correct an excessive enthusiasm for gardening. The truth of the matter is that gardening, like most other activities, can teach us important spiritual lessons. Consider the positive ones ... Who gives the beauty? Who gives the harvest? God. The lessons are there to be read, every day, as his glory is revealed in his crea­tion, your garden.