Our Love of the Garden

DO YOU welcome the tranquillity of a beautiful garden as a refuge from the noise and hectic pace of life? Are quiet parks with their lawns, flowers, shady trees, and ponds the surroundings you prefer for a picnic with your family or for a stroll with a friend? Yes, how soothing, refreshing, peaceful, and even therapeutic the garden is!

Although some may shy away from tending a garden, perhaps for want of time, all of us delight in the garden’s colors, aromas, sounds, and fruits. Thomas Jefferson—architect, scientist, lawyer, inventor, and U.S. president—loved the garden. He wrote: “No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth. . . . I am still devoted to the garden. But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.”

His view is shared by many. Each year millions of visitors stream to famous gardens of the world—Kew Gardens (the Royal Botanic Gardens), in England; the gardens in Kyoto, Japan; the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, in France; Longwood Gardens, in Pennsylvania, U.S.A., to mention a few. Many countries also have city areas where homes, nestled along tree-lined avenues, are surrounded by shrubs, trees, and a blaze of floral color—like a miniature paradise.

Gardens Can Promote Health

It has been observed that when humans keep in touch with the natural world, their health may be better, although the contact is no more than seeing flowers, trees, shrubs, and birds through a window. This led a New York City hospital to plant a garden on its roof. It was “received fantastically,” said a hospital official. “It’s been a morale booster for both patients and staff. . . . We see it having lots of therapeutic possibilities.” Indeed, studies show that people can benefit physically, mentally, and emotionally by feasting their senses on nature.

Moreover, a person who is spiritually inclined may feel closer to God when amid His handiwork. This aspect of the garden can be traced back to the very first garden on earth, the Garden of Eden, where God first communicated with man.—Genesis 2:15-17; 3:8.

The love of the garden is universal. And this, as we shall see, is significant. Before discussing that feature, though, we invite you to “walk” through a few of the gardens of history to see how deep in the hearts of all peoples the yearning for Paradise really is.

A Look at Some Famous Gardens

THE human experience with Paradise began in a garden located in an area called Eden, possibly near Lake Van, of modern Turkey. A river that branched into four rivers watered the garden for Adam and Eve, who were “to cultivate it and to take care of it.” What a delight it would be to manage a garden in which “every tree desirable to one’s sight and good for food” abounded!—Genesis 2:8-15.

Eden was a perfect home. Adam and Eve and their descendants were to extend its boundaries, no doubt using God’s exquisite original design as their model. In time, the entire earth would become a paradise comfortably filled with people. But the willful disobedience of our first parents resulted in their being evicted from this sanctuary. Sadly, all others of the human family were born outside this home in Eden.

Nevertheless, mankind was designed by the Creator to live in Paradise. So it was natural that future generations would try to surround themselves with imitations of it.

Early Gardens

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon have been hailed as one of the wonders of the ancient world. They were built by King Nebuchadnezzar more than 2,500 years ago for his Median wife who yearned for the forests and hills of her homeland. This 75-foot-high [22-m] stepped structure of arched vaults, all richly planted, contained enough soil to nurture large trees. The homesick queen was likely comforted as she strolled through this terraced Edenlike area.

Landscape gardening was prominent in Egypt’s fertile Nile Valley. “Egypt,” says The Oxford Companion to Gardens, “is the source of the world’s oldest pictures of gardens and the location of an exceptionally long . . . tradition of gardening.” A landscape plan of a garden belonging to an Egyptian official at Thebes, dating from about 1400 B.C.E., shows ponds, tree-lined avenues, and pavilions. Next to royal gardens, temple gardens were the most luxuriant, with their groves, flowers, and herbs irrigated by canals from ponds and lakes teeming with waterfowl, fish, and lotus lilies.—Compare Exodus 7:19.

The Persians too made an early mark on the world of gardens. So captivating were the gardens of Persia and Egypt that when Alexander the Great’s conquering armies returned to Greece in the fourth century B.C.E., they came well stocked with seeds, plants, and ideas. In Athens, Aristotle and his pupil Theophrastus assembled the growing inventory of flora and established a botanical garden, to study and classify plants. Many wealthy Greeks, like Egyptians and Persians before them, had lavish gardens.

Roman city dwellers blended house and garden in the confined space of the city. The wealthy created spectacular pleasure parks at their country villas. Even the tyrant Nero wanted his Eden, so he ruthlessly evicted hundreds of families, demolished their homes, and created a private park of over 125 acres [50 ha] around his palace. Later, about 138 C.E., at Emperor Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli, Roman landscaping reached its zenith. The villa had 600 acres [243 ha] of parks, pools, lakes, and fountains.

The ancient Israelites also had gardens and parks. Jewish historian Josephus writes of delightful parks abounding with streams at a place called Etam, some eight to ten miles [13-16 km] from Jerusalem. Etam’s parks may have been among the ‘gardens, parks, pools, and forest’ that the Bible says Solomon ‘made for himself.’ (Ecclesiastes 2:5, 6) Just outside Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives was the Garden of Gethsemane, made famous by Jesus Christ. Here, Jesus found a refuge where he could quietly teach his disciples.—Matthew 26:36; John 18:1, 2.

From Arab Gardens to English Gardens

When Arab armies spread east and west in the seventh century C.E., they, like Alexander, came across the gardens of Persia. (Compare Esther 1:5.) “The Arabs,” writes Howard Loxton, “found the Persian gardens very similar to the paradise which was promised to the faithful in the Koran.” Like its Persian model, the typical Arab garden, from Moorish Spain to Kashmir, was divided into four sections by four streams united at the center by a pool or a fountain, reminiscent of the four rivers of Eden.

In northern India, by Lake Dal in the beautiful Vale of Kashmir, 17th-century Mogul rulers planted more than 700 paradisaic gardens. These formed a dazzling palette of colors punctuated by hundreds of fountains, terraces, and cascades. The black marble pavilion built on Lake Dal’s shore by Shah Jahan (builder of the Taj Mahal) still carries the inscription: “If there is a paradise on the face of the earth, it is here, it is here, it is here.”

A few centuries earlier, Europe had passed from the Middle Ages into the 14th-century Renaissance. The gardening tradition of Rome, trampled under when the Middle Ages began in the fifth century C.E., started to bloom once again—this time under the rule of the church. Christendom saw the garden as a ‘provisional paradise.’ A ninth-century plan of a monastery shows two gardens labeled “Paradise.” Christendom’s gardens soon became bigger and grander, but instead of reflecting spiritual ideals, many became symbols of power and wealth.

When Charles VIII of France conquered Naples, Italy, in 1495, he wrote home: “You would not believe the beautiful gardens I have in this city . . . It seems that only Adam and Eve are lacking to make it a terrestrial paradise.” But if Charles had lived into the 17th century, he would have seen on French soil the vast gardens of King Louis XIV. The book The Garden asserts that the gardens at the Palace of Versailles “can still lay claim to being the world’s largest and grandest.”

The Renaissance, however, had a new definition of paradise: nature is to be subservient to enlightened man who is to impose order on the garden by purging it of all wildness. Trees and flowers were all set out in precise geometric configurations. Thus, early Roman topiary—the art of shaping trees and shrubs by clipping and training them—enjoyed a prodigious revival.

Then, in the 18th and 19th centuries, maritime exploration and trade revealed new plants and gardening concepts to the western world. England took its turn at garden designing. “In 18th-century England,” says The New Encyclopædia Britannica, “man became increasingly aware of the natural world of which he was a part. Rather than imposing his man-made geometric order on the natural world, he began to consider adjusting his own life to it.” Men like William Kent and Lancelot Brown excelled in landscaping. Brown laid out more than two hundred estates in England. Two men who became presidents of the United States, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, toured England in 1786 to study English gardens.

Landscapes of the East

China’s gardening tradition is to Eastern civilization what the traditions of Egypt, Greece, and Rome are to Western. The Chinese originally practiced an animist religion, in which rivers, rocks, and mountains were all seen as materialized spirits and so were to be respected. Thereafter, Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism swept through the land and produced their own forms of the garden.

On the other side of the Sea of Japan, Japanese gardens developed their own style, where form takes precedence over color and every item has its precise place. In an attempt to capture, in a limited area, nature’s aesthetics and diversity, the gardener places his rocks with care and plants and trains his garden meticulously. This is evident in bonsai (meaning “potted plant”), the art of training a miniature tree or perhaps a grove of trees into precise form and proportion.

Though its style may vary from its Western counterpart, the Eastern garden also reflects a yearning for Paradise. For example, during the Heian period in Japan (794-1185), writes Japanese garden historian Wybe Kuitert, gardeners attempted to evoke the atmosphere of a “paradise on earth.”

A Universal Love

Including even hunter-gatherer tribes, who lived in “natural” gardens—jungles, forests, and grasslands—the love of the garden is universal. Regarding “the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru,” says the Britannica, “the conquistadors reported elaborate gardens with terraced hills, groves, fountains, and ornamental ponds . . . not unlike contemporary gardens in the West.”

Yes, ancient groves astride the Nile, landscapes of the East, modern city parks, and botanical gardens—what do these reveal? Mankind’s yearning for Paradise. In noting this enduring “nostalgia for Paradise,” writer Terry Comito stated: “Gardens are places in which men come home again.” And what human would not delight in saying, ‘My home is like the Garden of Eden’? But is a global Eden—and not only for the wealthy—just a dream? Or is it a future certainty?

The Way Home to Paradise

IN VIEW of the human yearning for Paradise and the attempts both large and small to recreate it, one would think that by now the earth would be a veritable paradise. But it is not.

Mankind, instead, has given priority to greed, which often rules at the expense of the environment and its diversity of living things. Believing that material wealth will win out, many people have lost all hope that this earth will ever be transformed into an Edenic paradise. Rather, they look to an afterlife in heaven as their only hope for Paradise. This view implies, first, that our human yearning for Eden will forever be frustrated and, second, that God has abandoned this planet to human folly and greed. Is this so? Just what does the future hold? And where will that future be?

Paradise—In Heaven or on Earth?

Nearly 2,000 years ago, when speaking to a repentant thief impaled beside him, Jesus Christ said: “You will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:43) Did Jesus mean that the thief would go to heaven with him? No.

The evildoer would not have even entertained that idea. Why not? Because he would probably have been familiar with passages in the Hebrew Scriptures, which existed in his day, such as the first part of Psalm 37:29: “The righteous themselves will possess the earth.” Jesus taught that same truth, declaring: “Happy are the mild-tempered ones, since they will inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5) This scripture harmonizes with what is commonly called the Lord’s Prayer, which states: “Let your will take place, as in heaven, also upon earth.”—Matthew 6:9, 10.

The Bible teaches that God created the earth, not heaven, as home for the human family. His Word states that he “did not create [the earth] simply for nothing” but “formed it even to be inhabited.” (Isaiah 45:18) For how long? “He has founded the earth upon its established places; it will not be made to totter to time indefinite, or forever.” (Psalm 104:5) Yes, “the earth is standing even to time indefinite.”—Ecclesiastes 1:4.

It is God’s purpose for the vast majority of those who serve him to make this earth their home forever. Note how God’s Word, the Bible, comments on this. Psalm 37:11 foretells: “The meek ones themselves will possess the earth, and they will indeed find their exquisite delight in the abundance of peace.” For how long? Psalm 37:29 says: “The righteous themselves will possess the earth, and they will reside forever upon it.” At that time the scripture will be realized that declares: “You [God] are opening your hand and satisfying the desire of every living thing,” that is, the desire that is in harmony with God’s will.—Psalm 145:16.

What about those who have no desire to do God’s will? Proverbs 2:21, 22 declares: “The upright are the ones that will reside in the earth, and the blameless are the ones that will be left over in it. As regards the wicked, they will be cut off from the very earth; and as for the treacherous, they will be torn away from it.”

Paradise Restored

Soon now, God’s judgments will be executed against this wicked world. (Matthew 24:3-14; 2 Timothy 3:1-5, 13) But God will preserve “a great crowd” of people through that coming destruction into a new world of his making.—Revelation 7:9-17.

Then, God will direct the joyful task that his human subjects will have of transforming the entire earth into a paradise home for mankind. The Bible promises: “The wilderness and the waterless region will exult, and the desert plain will be joyful and blossom as the saffron. . . . For in the wilderness waters will have burst out, and torrents in the desert plain.”—Isaiah 35:1, 6.

In that expanding Paradise, there will be no more hunger, poverty, slums, homeless people, or crime-infested areas. “There will come to be plenty of grain on the earth.” (Psalm 72:16) “The tree of the field must give its fruitage, and the land itself will give its yield.” (Ezekiel 34:27) “They will certainly build houses and have occupancy; and they will certainly plant vineyards and eat their fruitage. They will not build and someone else have occupancy; they will not plant and someone else do the eating.” (Isaiah 65:21, 22) “They will actually sit, each one under his vine and under his fig tree, and there will be no one making them tremble.”—Micah 4:4.

Why Some Go to Heaven

Most people will probably acknowledge that they have a yearning for an earthly paradise. That is natural, for God never implanted in them a yearning for heaven; they cannot even conceive of what life in heaven is like. For example, in conversation with her Church of England minister, Pat, though a devoted church member, said: “I’ve never had any thoughts about going to heaven. I don’t want to go, and what would I do there anyway?”—Compare Psalm 115:16.

True, the Bible teaches that a limited number of humans, 144,000, do go to heaven. (Revelation 14:1, 4) It also explains why: “You made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God, and they are to rule as kings over the earth.” (Revelation 5:9, 10) Along with their King, Jesus Christ, these make up the “kingdom,” earth’s new heavenly government, for which Christians pray. This government will supervise the total rehabilitation of the earth and mankind.—Daniel 2:44; 2 Peter 3:13.

However, since the desire to live in heaven is not naturally present in humans, a unique operation of God’s spirit “bears witness” to the 144,000 so that they sense this special “upward call.” (Romans 8:16, 17; Philippians 3:14) Obviously, though, no such operation by holy spirit is needed for mankind in general because their eternal home is to be on a paradise earth.

A Spiritual Paradise Prepares the Way

How does one qualify for eternal life in Paradise on earth? “This means everlasting life,” Jesus said, “their taking in knowledge of you, the only true God, and of the one whom you sent forth, Jesus Christ.” (John 17:3) Linking peaceful human relations with a knowledge of God, Isaiah 11:9 states: “They will not do any harm or cause any ruin in all my holy mountain; because the earth will certainly be filled with the knowledge of Jehovah as the waters are covering the very sea.”—Compare Isaiah 48:18.

This knowledge, of course, is not just head knowledge. It influences one’s personality and nurtures godly qualities, such as “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, self-control.” (Galatians 5:22, 23) Jehovah’s Witnesses strive to cultivate these qualities, and thus, even now, they are blessed with a wholesome spiritual paradise.—Isaiah 65:13, 14.

What a contrast their spiritual condition is to that of the world, which plunges into more and more ungodliness and corruption! Soon, however, this wicked world will be destroyed by God. In the meantime, Jehovah’s Witnesses invite you to visit—yes, inspect—the spiritual paradise they enjoy. See for yourself that right now Jesus, the invisible heavenly King, is quietly leading future residents of that new world along the narrow way to the earthly Paradise and eternal life!—Matthew 7:13, 14; Revelation 7:17; 21:3, 4.