worldview and perspective on Gardens

God’s garden, made “in the beginning,” does not lie behind us, but ahead of us, in hope, and, in the meantime, all around us as our place of work. History without gardens would be a wasteland. What th...

The custody of the garden was given in charge to Adam, to show that we possess the things which God has committed to our hands, on the condition that, being content with the frugal and moderate use of...

“Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”

The Country is both the Philosopher's Garden and his Library, in which he Reads and Contemplates the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God.

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 ...

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 ...

A couple years ago I got to take a tour of the Huntington Library in Pasadena, California. The name is a bit misleading because what they are most known for are there amazing gardens. And so we were o...

[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...

The British poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was once engaged in a conversation with a man who believed children should never receive any kind of religious education or instruction, not until they were ol...

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.

The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.

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...

…How still the Landscape stands! How nonchalant the hedge! As if the “Resurrection” Were nothing very strange!

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.

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...

Let him who possesses a field, so partake of its yearly fruits, that he may not suffer the ground to be injured by his negligence; but let him endeavor to hand it down to posterity as he received it, ...

The biblical narrative begins and ends at home. From the Garden of Eden to the New Jerusalem we are hardwired for place and for permanence, for rest and refuge, for presence and protection. We long fo...

There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.

There is no escaping the need to manage nature. The best we can do is to observe the following rule: So manage nature as to minimize the need to manage nature. . . . We are destined to work our way ac...

There is a paradigm shift going on in the realm of forestry. For years there had been a consensus among ecologists that all trees were independent operators, each tree an island unto itself, the fores...

Every blade of grass, every insect, ant, and golden bee, all so amazingly know their path, though they have not intelligence, they bear witness to the mystery of God and continually accomplish it them...

Blessed is the one who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand on the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers; but whose delight is in the law of the Lord. On his law he meditat...

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

God is the Friend of Silence. See How Nature … Trees, Flowers, Grass... Grow in Silence.

Too often we give real estate to things in our lives that either haven’t earned their land or were never meant to occupy important space in the first place.

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

The world is a work of art, set before all for contemplation, so that through it the wisdom of Him who created it should be known …"

We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts”

There is an unaccountable solace that fierce landscapes offer to the soul. They heal, as well as mirror, the brokenness we find within. Moving apprehensively into the desert's emptiness, up the mo...

"This building has to be at least…. three times bigger than this!"