The Cultivating Gardener is a column designed to engage all garden lovers, regardless of skill or experience, as we glimpse, together, the deep tenderness of God hidden in our own backyards. In this column you will find reflections, resources and tips designed to help you expand your vision of what it means to cultivate your own plot of land. As you pursue this good and holy work of garden-tending, my hope is that you will find your own heart lovingly tended by the Great Gardener of both our soils and our souls.
It was a spectacular moment for me; I had always dreamed of handing someone a bouquet of fluffy blooms, saying, “Here — I grew these in my garden — they’re for you!” And here I was, at the threshold of his door, a vase of flowers in my hand about to utter those very words.
Up until now, the privilege of saying those words had seemed singularly reserved for someone like Martha Stewart, or, you know, “those” people over in the United Kingdom who live in quaint cottages with thatched roofs and oversee the patches of cultivated flowers quilting their fields. (To all my UK friends, I love you dearly — I live in a desert state in the middle of North America, so forgive my idealism!) But when our new neighbor moved in above us in our enchanting little apartment home, it occurred to me that I could, in fact, utter that phrase.
Our new neighbor was a single man of seventy, fond of children, skiing, historic sites, Ireland, Leonardo da Vinci, and all things beautiful. But we didn’t know any of these things about him yet. My children and I were simply ready to do what we always do when a new neighbor arrives at our little “community” of subdivided apartments: bake and deliver a fresh batch of our favorite peanut butter cookies.
But to my great elation, I realized that, this time, I could also gift him flowers!
So I gathered the ingredients for the cookies and made a giddy trip to the dollar store to purchase a little glass vase to encase the stalks of fuchsia and cream-colored Cosmos growing prolifically in my garden beds. (To me, that purchase might as well have been a crystal-necked gown for their bright-petaled faces.)
When the cookies were baked and the flowers freshly snipped, my children and I walked up the stairs to his apartment and knocked on his door. And yes, the words were just as fulfilling as I had dreamed they would be!
Now, two years later, he stops on his daily walks when he sees me working in my garden to greet me with a smile and a wry comment or two about the weather, asking after my husband and children by name. No matter how introverted I’m feeling, I look up from my work, wipe my sweaty forehead and chat. I’m never sorry I did. Most times, he generously praises my hard work in the garden, telling me how grateful he is to see its burgeoning colors through his upstairs windows. He has been to our home for holiday parties and casual tea-time, and has met many of our friends. My children chatter with him every time they see him.
Truly, our neighbor is now our friend, and I am delighted and humbled to know that my work in my garden and my kitchen were companions in forging that friendship. While I didn’t grow the peanuts or the sugar cane or even raise the chickens that gave me the eggs for the cookies, I did grow those beautiful Cosmos flowers in my backyard. And I did faithfully nurture them every day.
As I reflect over that summer, I find myself marveling at a dream come true. While the photographs of Martha Stuart’s bouquets are full of dreamy and bodacious blooms, my little offering of bold and bright Cosmos in a slender-necked dollar-store vase was a grand moment for me.
And while home and garden magazines and florists like Martha inspired my dreams, I realize that the empowerment I needed came from the generosity of other gardeners who gifted me offerings from their own gardens. I have not forgotten a single one.
For example, when we first moved in, a young family showed up at our door with fresh-squeezed lemonade and a mammoth vase boasting bushy hydrangea stalks from their backyard. One year (when I was not particularly thrilled about enduring one of those famous “milestone” birthdays), a knowing friend dropped off a gorgeous arrangement of pastel pink peonies from her garden. That was a sacrifice indeed, since peonies are notoriously difficult to grow in Colorado and have a very short blooming season, yet are one of my favorite flowers. I can still close my eyes and envision them sitting on my glass-topped side table between the two armchairs by the window and dazzling me in the morning sunlight.
Another year, a friend came over for coffee and surprised me with a sweet little bud vase of spring wildflowers she picked around her home, simply because she thought of me and knew they would bring me delight.
One spring, a church friend went out of her way to drive a slopping bucket of soaking Iris tubers to me, offering this newbie garden enthusiast a chance to preserve the presence of their life and beauty in her own garden.
Still other friends have given me seeds from their garden plants. Thanks to them, it is my goal this year to do the same.
I don’t remember every bouquet I create. But I do remember the ones that have been made for me; I remember the kindness and know the sacrifice that went into those gifts. After all, each flower-bud only blooms once, and having now cut many stalks of flowers from my own garden, I understand the sacrifice it is to snip each one. I’ve felt the angst that comes every time the blades of my shears snap shut on another stem, like I’m beheading a fragile expression of innocent beauty with my gardener’s guillotine.
But it’s not like that. A garden is the gift that keeps on giving, and offering flowers from our gardens, tomatoes from our greenhouses, peaches from our orchards, or the last squash of the season pushed out by our spent soil is a gift of both labor and love that brings to bear an invisible harvest — one that has repercussions far into the garden of the new creation. And in the beautiful irony of our Creator’s design, the pruning back of limbs, dead-heading blooms, and cutting back all-too-exuberant growth of snaking pumpkin vines increases the harvest of our fields ten-fold.
It reminds me of the widow in Scripture who gave all the money she possessed as an offering to God. [1] I imagine her — a bent old woman with knobby limbs and limp gray hair. But her eyes… I see a nobility in her eyes — a regal spark that defies her poverty. She knows who she is, and to whose kingdom she belongs. She gives all she has, trusting that the One into whose care she has committed herself has promised her a harvest of joy.
It’s remarkable that this unnamed widow made it into the annals of history, and her mite has multiplied into a harvest that has gathered innumerable souls into God’s kingdom. I think that her story shows us, as gardeners, that every meager harvest counts, and even a handful of warm, rosy strawberries, picked fresh from our garden, can be of greater value than a handful of rubies plucked from a storehouse of wealth.
As gardeners, we may feel that we have labored in vain. The output of our gardens doesn’t always reflect the blood, sweat and tears we (quite literally) pour into it.
But in Kingdom economy, nothing is ever wasted; our God is a generous God, and He has promised to reward us for the faithful stewarding of our resources.
“The vineyards you plant will bear fruit.
The fields will sing out and rejoice with the truth.
For all that is old will at last be made new …
For I have called you by name. Your labor is not in vain.” [2]
So enjoy your gardening this season, my friends, and give of its proceeds with the generous heart of your Father, for He delights in giving good gifts to His children. [3]
As always, allow me leave you with a bit of encouragement:
- Give something away from your garden this year. A basket of produce, a bouquet of flowers, or a packet of dried seeds from your favorite garden plant. Cook a surprise meal for a sick friend with produce you have grown. Don’t let all the cherries from your trees be left to rot — pick them and make jellies or preserves to give away as Christmas presents. Put in the extra effort to tell someone you love them. It matters.
- Make space for a cut flower garden. It doesn’t have to be big. Even a rectangular planter box on your back deck can happily house an abundance of seedlings. You can purchase a packet of seeds that have a smattering of different flowers and scatter them gently into the soil. As a bonus, choose a flower mix that doubles as a pollinator’s haven!
- It may sound like odd advice, but enjoy being generous with your resources. If you do, I suspect that the recipient of your generosity won’t be the only one to feel blessed. If my small story is of any value, I think you will, too.
Happy Gardening, friends!
[1] Mark 12:41-44
[2] “Your Labor Is Not in Vain,” The Porter’s Gate, featuring Paul Zach, Work Songs: The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Vol 1, 2017, Spotify
[3] Matthew 7:9-12
The featured images are courtesy of Ariel Lovewell and are used with her kind permission for Cultivating.
A founding member of The Cultivating Project, Christina has been fascinated by beauty her whole life. Color, texture, pattern, fragrance, melody, light – all of the boundless ways in which creation shines – ignites her imagination, compelling her to create. Even as a wee sprite, Christina was dedicated to wordsmithing and sketching her way through its marvels in an attempt to capture, at least partially, the imprint of the Creator within it. But writing and drawing are not her only creative endeavors; several years ago she took on the laborious (but rewarding) task of nurturing a garden in the dismal soils of the Rocky Mountain foothills, and has eagerly employed her spade (alongside her pen) as a tool to cultivate and curate the beauty around her.
She has two little gardeners-in-training who embody all these marvels and more in their merry little faces. She and her husband Brian are the founders of the Anselm Society based in Colorado Springs, whose mission and calling is a renaissance of the Christian Imagination. She serves as the Director of the Anselm Society Arts Guild and her creative work can be found at LiveBeautiful.today and on Instagram.
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