July 23, 2020
Today’s reflections are a gentle tribute to the art of simply being in the garden—to the quiet work, the patient joy, and the wonder that accompany those who spend their days among living things.
A garden does not just grow; it teaches. Every seed offers a parable, every failure a lesson, every blossom a small act of faith rewarded. Together, these voices remind us that the garden is both work and worship—a place where we create, reflect, and belong.
Lucy Maud Montgomery, who knew the beauty of domestic and rural life better than most, perfectly captures the sacred intimacy of gardening:
I love my garden, and I love working in it. To potter with green growing things, watching each day to see the dear, new sprouts come up, is like taking a hand in creation, I think. Just now, my garden is like faith - the substance of things hoped for.
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Canadian author, Anne's House of Dreams
What a lovely image—that the tender act of weeding or watering can mirror faith itself.
To plant is to believe in what cannot yet be seen. Each sprout becomes a promise kept between gardener and earth.
Rudyard Kipling, ever brisk and forthright, brings the counterpoint—a reminder that a garden’s grace demands effort:
Gardens are not made by singing 'Oh, how beautiful!' and sitting in the shade.
― Rudyard Kipling, English journalist and poet
His line, part reprimand and part truth, reminds us that the garden gives back only what we give it.
The blisters and soil under the nails are part of its poetry, not distractions from it. To Kipling, the beauty of blooms is paid for in sweat and patience.
Eleanor Perenyi’s insight is more introspective.
A gardener, she reminds us, must learn to relinquish guilt as well as control. Not every struggling plant is a moral test, nor every wilted leaf a failure:
It takes a while to grasp that not all failures are self-imposed, the result of ignorance, carelessness, or inexperience.
It takes a while to grasp that a garden isn't a testing ground for character and to stop asking, what did I do wrong?
Maybe nothing.
— Eleanor Perenyi, gardener and author
There is wisdom here for anyone who has tended a garden—or a life. Some things bloom, some fade. The garden’s rhythm is its own, and humility becomes one of the gardener’s finest tools.
Finally, Susan Rebecca White captures the sensory and emotional magic of discovering a garden, especially through the eyes of wonder.
Her passage from A Place at the Table brings the scents and colors alive:
She keeps walking, so I keep following, making our way down a stone path that leads to a set of tiered gardens.
It is magical back here, garden after garden, the first filled with herbs like Mama grows, rosemary and lavender and mint and sage.
Beyond that is a rose garden. There must be fifty rose bushes in it, all with different-colored blooms. We keep walking, down to the third tier, where there are tended beds like Daddy's vegetable patch in our backyard.
"Look at this," Keisha says.
She stands beside row upon row of little green plants with thick green leaves.
She kneels beside one of them and pulls back a leaf. There are small red strawberries growing underneath.
She picks one and hands it to me. I've never eaten a strawberry that tastes like this before. It's so rich, with juice like honey.
It's nothing like the ones Mama buys at Kroger.
― Susan Rebecca White, author, A Place at the Table
White reminds us why the garden endures as the purest kind of refuge.
To taste fruit directly from its stem, to breathe the scent of mint and rose together—these experiences connect us back to the essentials: flavor, fragrance, and the shared human joy of growing and giving.
From Montgomery’s faith to Kipling’s labor, from Perenyi’s grace to White’s sensory delight, these reflections form a kind of gardener’s creed.
To love the garden is to work, to wait, to fail, and to begin again.
But most of all, it is to stand among the living things of earth and feel, for a moment, whole.
