Every so often I’ll do or say something that makes my mother remark, “You’re just like your dad.” It’s true—I share his dark coloration and artist’s temperament. We both enjoy kaiju flicks and B-movies. Bento boxes from Sushi Masa are a favorite treat, and bookstores and plant nurseries are some of our favorite places to visit. Around ten p.m. each night, the two of us are so tired that everything is funny, and we laugh uncontrollably at nothing until we go to bed.
But Dad’s lasting impact on my life is horticulture—a hobby of mine because of his influence. Dad has always loved plants, especially trees and bonsai. Growing up I was surrounded by foliage, flowers, and blueberry bushes. Dad would find baby trees sprouting along the side of the road or on our family’s land, dig them up, and cart them back home. Our backyard is still like an arbor; large pots with baldcypress saplings dot the landscape. Bonsai punctuate the little forest with their distinct shapes.
I especially love to watch my dad work with his bonsai—twisting wires and hanging weights on branches to make a small tree look just so. Bonsai is an ancient Japanese art that takes incredible patience, time, and care—the same patience, time, and care that my dad invests in me. He taught me everything I know about plants, and he still takes time in the evenings to help me work with our little green friends.
But Dad never pushed his gardener instincts on me, and he never forced me to work outside with him. He simply took care of his plot. Slowly, slowly—through Dad’s faithful attentiveness to his trees and houseplants—curiosity overcame my spirit.
The Lesson in the Lack of Control
After my grandmother passed away, Dad noticed my depressive spiral and took action when few others did. “You know,” he told me, “you should buy a few plants. You need to take care of something that isn’t you.”
Feeling somewhat silly, I went to a nursery and picked up three succulents: Saoirse, Phyllis, and Ingeborg. (If I name my plants, I reasoned, I’ll care more about them. It was true.) I put every last fiber of effort into caring for those succulents. Slowly my concern that my plants got adequate food and light turned into concern for my own eating and resting habits.
That was the first lesson Dad taught me through plants—just like us, they need support and care. And moreover, proper nurture differs from plant to plant.
Plants are thereby a lesson in control, in that we possess very little of it. When God gave humans dominion over creation, He gave us authority, yes. But in our fallen world, there’s a pervading assumption that “since we have dominion, we can do as we wish, and it’s enough.”
In the words of Lisa Swander, “Houseplants are the cure for that particular piece of poor theology.”
Contrary to our view of ourselves, houseplants do not care that we have dominion. Succulents do not care that you want to position them aesthetically in your living space. Put an echeveria in a dark corner, and it will die. Every plant comes with its own set of non-negotiables regarding light, temperature, water, and soil mixture. Disregard those rules, and you will soon be disposing of plant carnage. You must adapt to your plants’ needs, because they will not adapt to yours.
In my quest to better care for my own plants, I’ve been learning soil mixing techniques. Some plants, such as daylilies and ferns, need a soil that retains moisture. Others, such as snake plants and pothos, despise frequent waterings. Soil is the balancing pole on the precarious tightrope between under- and over-watering. Knowledge of basic soil types—rock, silt, sand, peat, loam, clay—is essential to the gardener.
Two summers ago, Dad came home one evening with a box of stringy brown fibers. “This is coconut peat,” he said. “Could you grab the bag of lava rock? I’m going to pot a desert rose.”
Dad had done his research on his desert rose. He carefully crafted a soil mixture in which the delicate tree could rest. For a while the tree thrived. But as fast as it had sprouted leaves, the desert rose’s foliage turned a sickly yellow, and the plant died.
This is the second lesson in control. Sometimes you do everything you can do, and it’s not enough. Even experienced gardeners like Dad lose plants. Gardeners must let go of illusions of sovereignty.
The Holiness of Horticulture
We cannot, however, let go of plants altogether. Environmentalists get a bad rap for being crazed naturalists who worship trees and have smoked every plant on the Earth’s surface. But the shred of truth in their pursuit of a healthier climate is that we are charged with caring for the Earth, plants included. This care doesn’t need to come at the cost of elevating nature above all else, but care must exist.
God Himself cares. I never feel closer to God than when I am working in the garden or walking in the woods. I don’t think that feeling is unfounded. God created the first man and woman in a garden, after all. But even before that, He created land and vegetation on the third day of creation. Land itself, I think, is quite the feat of natural architecture and could easily deserve its own day of creation. But I imagine God created land and looked at the empty biomes He had spoken into existence—deserts and savannas and tundras—and thought, It’s missing something. The day wasn’t over, the creation wasn’t finished, and God created plants. Then land, adorned with greenery and budding things, was good.
I confess, I’ve often thought of God as merely a Warrior and Judge. He seemed for a long time like a big bully, waiting in heaven for the slightest slip-up from me, and then He’d spin His wheel of suffering and inflict something new on my family. Every good gift He allowed I clung to, for fear He’d eventually strip it away from me out of malevolent spite.
It’s true that God is a Warrior and Judge. He is capable of unimaginable wrath. But to limit God to unbridled rage is still to limit God. It is blasphemously arrogant to reduce Him to cruelty. My inability to recognize His goodness didn’t mean God’s goodness didn’t exist; it meant my human understanding was insufficient, laughably meager, and broken. God does not pour out only anger and jealousy (which He does righteously); He also pours out incomprehensible mercy.
Plants are an excellent reminder of that mercy. In Genesis 1—the very beginning of the Bible—our first glimpse of God is not one of a fury-filled, all-consuming fire, but of a loving, nurturing Gardener who designed, planted, and watched over His grand arbor called Earth, taking delight in its flourishing. For His grandest creatures, man and woman, God had created the perfect home: a garden, lush with trees and foliage. He placed His own image-bearers in the garden called Eden, which means “paradise.”
That paradise was shattered by our own hands. Becoming a gardener will incline your ear to the groaning of creation. You can hear it. There’s a funeral in my spirit every time a bonsai loses all its leaves or the roots of a houseplant rot. But the Gardener has not abandoned His garden. The paradise we broke is not irredeemable. God is not just concerned that creation flowers; He wants it to flourish. The same Gardener who took joy in His good handiwork in Genesis 1 takes joy in its redemption.
We ought to take joy, too. We can rejoice evermore in the continual grace present in this broken but still-beautiful creation. Go outside, reach out, and pluck delight from the trees. Thank the God who created and sustains biodiversity, who uses plants to thrill our hearts, beautify our world, and purify our air.
Even unbelievers acknowledge the goodness that plants bring into our lives. The tagline of the plant company The Sill is “Plants make people happy.” And plants do make people happy. They help us breathe easy. They boost our spirits and brighten our living spaces.
But for the believer, plants are so much more than a fleeting happiness. They remind us of our inadequacy and of God’s incredible goodness. They punctuate a barren and broken landscape with sprouts of resilient green. They proclaim to us the First Gardener, who is bent on restoration. Andrew Peterson concurs with the following quote in his memoir God of the Garden:
The God of the garden is and has always been present, working and keeping what He loves. Sometimes He plants. Sometimes He prunes. But in His goodness He intends to reap a harvest of righteousness.
The Good Gifts of God
I spent so much of my Christian life bitter toward God for letting suffering afflict my life. Sickness, death, grief, failure, and relational conflict were just the God-given gears in the machine of my body. I agreed (and still agree) with the poet Christian Wiman that our existence is drenched in sorrow. Our entire lives are one long, sad sentence full of heartache, yes—but that sentence is punctuated by so much blessing.
In my bitterness I missed the beauty around me. I missed the incredible gift I had been given as a child—the gift of growing up surrounded by an arbor, of having a backyard bountiful with flowers.
God knew (and still knows) my cynical disposition. But in His wisdom He gave me a father with an affinity for plants. My attitude toward creation and toward God Himself changed when I realized that my own father is a picture (albeit imperfect) of my Heavenly Father. The delight Dad takes in his trees reflects the delight the Gardener takes in redeeming His plants and His people.
In this world we must relinquish the illusion of control. We must recognize the limits of our dominion. But in your frustration with the brokenness of the Earth, as your own groanings join the jarring chorus of a fractured creation, do not limit God.
As I care for my own garden, I am aching for the resurrection light, the living water, the true Vine that will restore Earth to its original paradise. I am delighting in horticulture—the harkening back to our original calling to tend and keep.
I am thanking God for gardeners, for gardening, for my earthly father and the daily reminder he is of my Heavenly Father.
I am honored each time my mother says, “You’re just like your dad.”