Trusting the Gardener

Florence & William, Trusting the Gardener

Gardening is my inheritance. A gift from those who came before me.

Before I ever knew the language of design or horticulture, I knew the rhythm of tending. In my childhood home, gardens were not ornamental extras. They were food on the table. They were beauty in vases. They were gathering places for bees and butterflies. They were where we worked side by side as a family. The garden kept us rooted —

to the soil, to one another, and to the steady hope that what is planted in faith will grow in time.

Growing up in America’s Garden Capital deepened that inheritance. Regular visits to Longwood Gardens shaped my imagination. It remains my favorite garden of all. Its grandeur, symmetry, fountains, conservatories, and seasonal displays taught me that gardens can be both intimate and breathtaking. Those early visits sparked a lifetime of seeking out gardens wherever I travel — across our nation and abroad.

One that particularly captured my heart was Villa d'Este, a 16th-century UNESCO World Heritage site near Rome. Its gravity-fed water gardens and theatrical fountains felt like a European cousin to Longwood — proof that water, stone, and imagination can create living art that endures centuries.

Yet for all the grandeur I’ve witnessed, my greatest joy remains simple.

I love pressing a small seed into the soil and waiting. There is something miraculous about that quiet act of trust — placing what appears lifeless into darkness and watching it push upward into light, becoming fully what it was meant to be. Growing food, flowers, herbs, and shaping a lovely landscape satisfies all my senses — the fragrance of earth, the texture of leaves, the hum of pollinators, the color of petals catching morning light.

Gardening keeps me returning because it slows me. It steadies me. It reminds me that growth is rarely hurried and beauty is rarely accidental.

Above all, time in the garden has become sacred space. Among the flowers, I feel closest to the loved ones who have moved beyond this life to what I imagine as their heavenly garden. Working the soil has softened grief. Tending blooms has made room for memory. In the quiet between birdsong and breeze, longing feels gentler.

Gardening is where inheritance meets hope — where past, present, and promise grow side by side.

And I have come to believe that nothing planted in love is ever lost.

What is sown in quiet faith rises in its season.

The One who tends the lilies tends us still —watering what we cannot see,

bringing beauty from hidden places,

and keeping watch over every growing thing.

And so, I return — trusting the Gardener.