Of Praise in and In Praise of Gardening
As spring turns to summer, reflecting on what I love about the litany and liturgy that is gardening.
**A quick note: I am experimenting with video uploads on substack! You can also watch this video on my YouTube channel, or read the typed-out essay with a few photos sprinkled in below.
Here we stand at the official start of summer, with every bird singing and every bud opening. It’s hard to believe that just a few months ago, everything was brown and drab. Green grass and leaves can seem like such a distant, impossible memory in March, but by June perhaps we forget and take them for granted.
Earlier this spring, I read a book called A Company of Swans by Eva Ibbotson, and there was a passage about the coming of spring that stood out to me. In this scenario, the main character is struggling with discouragement and despair:
“I must not despair, thought Harriet. Despair was a sin, she knew that: turning one’s face away from the created world. And resolutely she forced herself not just to look at, but really to see the greening hedges, the glistening buttercups, the absurdness of the lambs - setting herself, as unhappy people do, a kind of pastoral litany.”
I like how Eva Ibbotson suggests a litany of plants and scenery, and that word “litany” in particular caught my attention, because I’ve been saying some more traditional litanies this year. I completed the Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary which is laid out by St. Louis de Montfort - I originally read about it last Advent in his book True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, which I would highly recommend. The consecration consists of a set of prayers and readings that you undertake for 33 days - I did it during Lent - and many of the prayers are litanies, long lists of petitions, invocations, and supplications. I say the rosary and go to Mass and read the prayers in my Magnificat, but I hadn’t ever said a set of litanies quite like this before, particularly the same long litanies for so many days in a row.
At first it can feel a bit tedious and daunting to carve out the time for it, to try not to miss a day in the sequence. But in the end I found it to be very restful and enriching. It forces you to slow down and deliberately, reverently repeat the beauty and goodness that you see and believe, to praise it methodically and intentionally, to say again and again the things you thought you already knew, to find new meaning in the same words - or, in Eva Ibbotson’s analogy, to find new meaning in the same scents and sights of the season.
When I think of the full arrival of spring and summer in all its various slow and sudden stages, I think not of a litany but of a liturgy, a slow and steady procession of performances, where each genus and species, each piece of verdure and vegetation takes its turn on the stage in the theater of praise. First the brave and brazen daffodils raising their golden trumpets, then the blushing, drifting petals from the flowering trees, the lilacs and the wisteria slowly getting louder and bolder in their hues. The garden writer Gertrude Jekyll described the fulfillment of seeing the seedlings you planted grow as “the offering of a constant hymn of praise.” Elizabeth Goudge, one of my favorite authors, described it like this:
“About her the great trees soared upwards, stretching their branches against the sky like arms held up in adoration. They were like living creatures, those trees, and so were the myriad flowers that grew about her feet. In their color and scent they were as an army that praised God; the ground was singing bright with them.”
In the past, when I read passages in books that mentioned different flowers, I had a vague knowledge of the plants that were referenced, but that familiarity has deepened so much now that I have become a gardener myself. Now I often know not merely which plant is which, but I understand each one’s place in the line-up. I know how eagerly they’re anticipated, how much work goes into their arrival. My mom introduced me last summer to the Garden Song, which is very popular and has been recorded by many different artists, but our favorite version is by the songwriter himself, Dave Mallett.
Pullin' weeds and pickin' stones
Man is made of dreams and bones
Feel the need to grow my own
'Cause the time is close at hand
Grain for grain, sun and rain
Find my way in nature's chain
Tune my body and my brain
To the music from the land
I think that’s exactly what Eva Ibbotson was talking about in her reference to a pastoral litany, it’s what I feel when I’m gardening. Gardening was something I always wanted to explore more, but at first I was intimidated. It requires a lot of time and patience and work, and it involves a lot of disappointments. There’s no getting around that. Not every seedling survives, not every transplant thrives, not every vine flowers.
But even so, the very process of focusing your attention on the earth, on trying to make your garden grow, will help something healthy and beneficial and strong to grow inside of you. One of the things that I like best about gardening is that I’m working in my garden, I don’t think of anything but my garden. My thoughts may be cunning fugitives throughout the tasks of the rest of the day, but when I’m digging in the ground or getting out the hose, for once they seem to cooperate with me. I go about my small space and visit my plants and seedlings and ask what I can do for them - more water, less water? More sunshine, more shade? More butterflies, fewer beetles? A more sturdy barrier to baffle the deer?
Plant your rows straight and long
Temper them with prayer and song
Mother Earth will make you strong
If you give her love and care
An old crow watching hungrily
From his perch in yonder tree
And in my garden I'm as free
As that feathered thief up there
As the song says, I remember someone blessed these seeds; they need to be tempered with prayer and song, but they also are a prayer and song. The flowers and plants never get distracted from their natural vocation singing that hymn of praise that Elizabeth Goudge and Gertrude Jekyll reference. When we are about that same business of praise, we are making the best use of our own lives. I love gardening because it always reminds me of that.
I think it’s no accident that Genesis highlights gardening as man’s original occupation; it’s a very salutary occupation…even when things are not growing quite as well as I would have liked, which I confess, ironically, has been a bit of the situation this spring. 😆 It’s been so chilly and dry, and unfortunately a hefty percentage of my early spring seedlings just did not make it. However, patience is part of the process and part of the point! I’ve got some new seedlings going now, and I’ve also got some hardy perennials who are powering through.
There is a truly spectacular little flood of lily of the valley at the foot of one of the big trees which I am always delighted by every spring. My farmhouse was built about 100 years ago, and I feel like the original farmer’s wife must have planted these; I think it must have taken many decades for them to spread to this extent. It feels like such a beautiful legacy she left, a beautiful gift she gave to me, to all future residents of this house. Gardening is a gift you can give to others who pass by and a legacy you can leave to future generations, which is yet another reason why I love it. ❤️
Emma, what a gorgeous post. You certainly have a gift for writing. I appreciate how you find joy, beauty, and spirituality in your surroundings, yet also acknowledge that there can be challenges too.
I agree with Erica G that your writing style is very vivid and takes you into the setting wonderfully. I am an avid gardener and understand the triumphs and disappointments of creating a lovely yard. Still, mostly I enjoy how much I feel the touch of God on every little new leaf, dewdrop, or bloom and that I am a part of a larger picture helping make our world a little more beautiful each day.