The Art of Gardening

“You may have 300 acres to work with, or three; a large and fertile garden surrounding a suburban home, or a tiny square space in the back of your city home; you may have a large balcony with space for oblong or round boxes or containers of some sort, or only a windowsill or two. Whatever it is, there is something very basic in being involved with a growing, living art form such as a garden of some sort. One can grow flowers, vines, small trees in pots or barrels, vegetables in beautiful rows and lush variety; one can have a full herb garden surrounded by its own little hedge, or a miniature herb garden in a window box. There is something very exciting about holding tiny brown seeds in one’s hand, in rubbing soil in one’s fingers to make it fine in texture, in putting some natural manure at the right depth to give richness to the soil, in placing the seeds with one’s own fingers in the rows, in covering them up and patting them. There is something exciting in watering the bare ground, wondering whether the hidden seeds are doing anything at all, wondering whether they will burst out of the little shell and become roots going down and stem and leaves coming up. The day the first tips of green are seen, if they are your seeds, planted by your own fingers, there is a thrill that is surely similar to producing an art work, a thrill of accomplishment mixed with the reality of what is, what exists, what the universe consists of.”
~From The Hidden Art of Homemaking by Edith Schaeffer, chapter 6, page 86

“A Christian, who realizes he has been made in the image of the Creator and is therefore meant to be creative on a finite level, should certainly have more understanding of his responsibility to treat God’s creation with sensitivity, and should develop his talents to do something to beautify his little spot on the world’s surface. Neighbors, friends and strangers walking by ought to find the Christian’s gardens, farms, estates, schools, hospitals, huts, missions and factories, surrounded by beauty of grass, moss, rocks, fern, bushes, trees, flowers and vegetables, planted and cared for with an expression of originality and artistic planning on some scale. A Christian individual or organization should not move into a property and turn it into shambles. The opposite should be true. It should grow and blossom into a place of beauty, demonstrating something of the wonder of the One who made plant life to produce seeds in the first place.”
~From The Hidden Art of Homemaking by Edith Schaeffer, chapter 6, page 88