personal development on Gardening

Gardening, besides being a practical, life-nurturing task, is also always a spiritual activity. In it people attempt to make visible and tasty what is good, beautiful, and even holy. Every act of gard...

It is no disparagement to the garden to say it will not fence and weed itself, nor prune its own fruit trees, nor roll and cut its own lawns...It will remain a garden only if someone does all these th...

In many parts of the country, leaf clean-up is an annual chore. They fall from the trees, blanket our lawns, and we often bag them up and toss them out (or burn them). There’s a lesson in this… In my...

A gardener’s education begins with the realization that we are never exempt from the needs and requirements of care. It is formed through sustained attention to and responsibility for the places that ...

As the gardener, by severe pruning, forces the sap of the tree into one or two vigorous limbs, so should you stop off your miscellaneous activity and concentrate your force on one or a few points.

We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?

[A gardener cultivates soil more than plants.] He lives buried in the ground. He builds his monument in a heap of compost. If he came into the Garden of Eden he would sniff excitedly and say: ‘Good Lo...

May I a small house and large garden have; And a few friends, And many books, both true.

One of my favorite sections of Home Depot is the power garden tool department. Even though I have all the tools I need, I still like browsing through Home Depot’s collection of power mowers, chainsaws...

For me the appropriate metaphor for the inner spiritual centre is a garden, a place of potential peace and tranquility. This garden is a place where the Spirit of God comes to make self-disclosure to ...

We say that Nature rests, yet she is working like mad. She has only shut up shop and pulled the shutters down; but behind them she is unpacking new goods, and the shelves are becoming so full that the...

Any experienced gardener has heard of a botanical term called Apical (ah-pick-ul) dominance. In most plants that grow from a central stem, from maple trees to bush peas, whatever branch is at the top ...

I can stick artificial flowers on this tree that will not flower; or I can create the conditions in which the tree is likely to flower naturally. I may have to wait longer for my real flowers; but the...

An experienced gardener knows the value of not watering their tomatoes. Well, there's a little more to it, but that's the headline. Suppose you go to the nursery in the spring and get a tom...

I’m more of an aboveground type of girl, as in, I like the stuff you can see. Flowers, trees, and vegetation symbolize life, growth, and transformation. The problem with focusing on external manifesta...

Even the richest soil, if left uncultivated will produce the rankest weeds.

If your vision is for a year, plant wheat. If your vision is for ten years, plant trees. If your vision is for a lifetime, plant people.

The story is told of a farmer in a Midwestern state who had a strong disdain for “religious” things. As he plowed his field on Sunday morning, he would shake his fist at the church people who passed b...

The inordinate desire in the west to increase productivity, to go faster and faster, especially in business, can actually become counterproductive. In this short story from the Chinese philosopher Men...

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I made the long drive from San Antonio, Texas, to Pasadena, California, where we now reside. We passed through hundreds of miles of southwestern desert, most of whic...

The most exemplary nature is that of the topsoil. It is very Christ-like in its passivity and beneficence, and in the penetrating energy that issues out of its peaceableness. It increases by experienc...

My first call to ministry was in Eastern Washington state. It turned out to be one of the most prolific winemaking regions in the country. One of the things I learned from a local winery was really qu...

In his excellent book, An Unhurried Life, Alan Fadling contrasts our overly busy lives with a vision of the kingdom from Isaiah chapter 61: Isaiah envisioned a kingdom in which those people in need ...

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or. what's a heaven for? " Robert Browning A part of our desire at The Pastor’s Workshop is to help pastors connect the stories in ...

The couple in the garden was to multiply, so providing the citizens of the city. Their cultivation of earth's resources as they extended their control over their territorial environment through th...

We are exploring together. We are cultivating a garden together, backs to the sun. The question is a hoe in our hands and we are digging beneath the hard and crusty surface to the rich humus of our li...

What is clear on all accounts is that a garden was an enclosed area designed for cultivation... [so] what we have, then, rather than an image of primitivism, is one of an area that is bounded, probabl...

Save my soul, Good Gardener Evil flies in wanting to steal my hope Work piles up, insecure boulders ready to crash, leaving no room to root My faith begins to wither as does our relationship Distract...

In Thanks! I wrote that legendary investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton had posed the question, “How can we get six billion people around the world to practice gratitude?” Not long after Sir ...

On Saturday afternoons when all the things are done in the house and there’s no real work to be done, I play Bach and Chopin and turn it up real loudly and get a good bottle of chardonnay and sit out ...