I never knew my maternal grandmother; she died when I was just six months old, but I feel her legacy in the garden. All my life I have seen her daughter, my mother, delighting in her pot plants, but much as I loved flowers, I was an indoor girl until necessity pushed me out there.

Lack of finance has caused my husband and I to buy very run-down land several times now, and my husband’s support coupled with my love of beauty and order has given me the drive to tackle the hard and heavy work necessary to discover and draw out the potential of that land. The rewards have been far beyond my wildest expectations, and have inspired my photography hobby so that I can bring that beauty indoors to be enjoyed over and over again as it appears on my screen saver.

As a teenager at boarding school in the city, with pocket money and access to shops for the first time, I delighted in the newfound joy of buying gifts for my loved ones. My search for a birthday gift for my mother yielded a little plaque with the following verse:

“The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,–
One is nearer God’s heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.”

It was an inspired choice, having greater meaning for my mother than I had expected. Unbeknownst to me, it was a verse often quoted by her mother. As a grandmother myself now, I look back on my life and see the unfolding of God’s plan in it, as He has drawn me to a greater appreciation of that verse, often using my painful experiences to lift me to the next step.

My father’s alcoholism initially caused me as a teenager to turn to my Father in Heaven, and give my life back to Him in time for Him to nurture me through the broken heart that resulted from my lack of understanding of His direction for my life. He was so patient and forgiving through those years as I persevered with my own dreams instead of His. When I was eventually ready to face life single, He brought my husband into my life with the unmistakable affirmation that my battered heart needed that this was His plan for my life.

By the time He took our first son Home to await us in Heaven, I didn’t need to understand the ‘whys’. He had already taught me that He has everything under control, and that

“...God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). NLT

He carried me through the very sharp and real grief of parting with my beloved baby, and gave me two more precious children. I wanted to be a full-time housewife and mother but we needed more income, so my husband embarked on an apprenticeship to gain a skill and better salary, while I took on a caretaker position that provided a small income and a cottage for us to live in. I cleaned a public building and tended its gardens accompanied by our small children. My husband and I shared the load of mowing the vast lawns with a push mower. In my mind we were gardening as a stepping stone to the occupation for which my husband was training. Little did we know that our future lay in the gardening!

We tried our hand at farming for ten years on land purchased as an ‘ex-orchard’, then moved to a five acre block. On both, we learned a great deal about clearing neglected and overgrown land and growing things. Once again, lack of finance had forced me to work outside the home. One position taught me a great deal about basic computer work and creative word processing. Another occupation taught me the use of various complex software packages. With the children now living their own lives away from home, the pressure on our finances was reduced and I needed more freedom to visit them, so I gave up work at last, feeling a little cheated that I finally did this in time to deal with my empty nest and painful conflict in my birth family, but at last I had time to tend the neglected land we had bought. God knew how therapeutic and educational that would be for me. As I chiselled away at the neglect, I needed to know which plants were treasures planted by the original owners, and which were ‘rubbish’, so I developed a local network of knowledgeable gardeners and experts. I also learned a lot about my physical abilities and limits.

Now that Chris has left his job and purchased a couple of large mowers at a dry and therefore quiet time of year, supplementing our income with other garden work has been a natural progression. Weeding a lawn in the sunshine with my husband recently, I found myself reflecting on our journey to this point, and the preparation that God had been doing in our lives for many years to bring us the skills and contacts that would be so useful in our new business. My photography hobby, word processing skills and even facebook have been invaluable for advertising, and I would have been afraid to tackle the accounting software without my other software experience. Years of handling a reception counter and multiple busy phone lines have given me a greater appreciation of the peace and quiet, the birdsong, the reflective solitude, or the company of the man I love. As His joy wells again in my heart, the words of an old hymn roll off my tongue:

“When we walk with the Lord in the light of his word, what a glory he sheds on our way.”

Such a walk impacts for generations.

My grandmother’s oft-quoted verse turns out to be part of a longer poem:

God’s Garden

THE Lord God planted a garden
In the first white days of the world,
And He set there an angel warden
In a garment of light enfurled.

So near to the peace of Heaven,
That the hawk might nest with the wren,
For there in the cool of the even
God walked with the first of men.

And I dream that these garden-closes
With their shade and their sun-flecked sod
And their lilies and bowers of roses,
Were laid by the hand of God.

The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,–
One is nearer God’s heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.

For He broke it for us in a garden
Under the olive-trees
Where the angel of strength was the warden
And the soul of the world found ease.

by Dorothy Frances Gurney (1858 – 1932)

Walk with Him in prayer, even if you can’t see your destination. He will reveal that in His perfect timing, and support, nurture, comfort and teach you along the way

Sue Terry