Lessons From A Dead Garden

By Alison Stoner

A handful of years ago I decided to give gardening a shot. Over the years my little front yard garden has grown, each year adding another raised bed or two, and experimenting with different vegetables and varieties of flowers. Each year, the Lord has met me in the garden, revealing Himself to me through the dirt, weeds, and blooms.

This year, however, the garden was different. 

This year has been different.

In springtimes past I was excited to get my hands in the soil and map out where everything was going to be planted. I eagerly awaited the sunshine and the opportunity to water my seeds and sprouts every day, with hopeful anticipation of harvest and bountiful bouquets.

This past spring, however, life was hard. We were living off an extremely tight budget - one that consisted of a large line item labeled “Hope”. My husband’s health was still wavering, and the appointments were still plentiful. To sum it up, I was weighed down by the weight of the world and depression hovered above me like a cloud.

Typically the garden is the perfect prescription for my winter blues, but this spring was different. Life was just plain hard. So, with all the things coupled together, the garden barely got planted - very late in the season I should add - and was hugely neglected for most of the summer. My garden this year looked awful.

I spent some time this past Saturday clearing out the sad excuse of a garden. Truthfully, I was sick of seeing the overgrown jungle of weeds every time I pulled up to my house. The weather was pleasant, my body needed some movement, and my mind needed a distraction from worrisome thoughts that were floating around inside my head. So, to the front yard I went with my gardening gloves and a wheel barrel.

My goal was to make my front yard look not so pitiful, but what happened that Saturday afternoon was an encounter with the Lord. Despite the rough year of gardening, the Lord, in His faithfulness, still met me in our secret space. Each revelation He showed me applied so beautifully to this season of life I’ve walked through too. The Lord showed me that this season is not a waste.

Even though this year was different, the Lord still used the garden to speak to me.

Lessons from a Dead Garden

The first thing I noticed about my garden beds was that there was actually quite a lot in bloom! Before I started ripping things up by the roots, I sent my daughter for my clippers so that I could create myself one last bouquet. While I had clipped a bouquet or two throughout the summer, the bouquets were smaller than past years. This final bouquet of the season, however, was plentiful. The colors were vibrant and the many stems made it full!

While I was clipping flowers and picking the last of the cherry tomatoes, Holy Spirit revealed to me that even though things looked dead at first glance, growth and life was the reality. He went on to show me that throughout my year, even though I’ve felt like things were dry and nothing was happening, the Lord has been using me in mighty ways to advance His kingdom and give Him glory. Just like in the garden, so much growth has occurred in my life over the last couple of years.

After arranging my last vase of flowers (of which I’m still admiring), I headed back to the garden to handle what I originally set out to do - rip it all up and say goodbye! I was stopped once again, however, by life. There was a large bee who was lazily hanging on for dear life, its feet covered in the pollen dust from the center of a cosmo bloom. I thought if I tugged on the dead stalks around it the bee would simply buzz away and I could continue on clearing out, but that was not the case. The bee didn’t move. Even after clearing all the other boxes out, the bee remained.

Ready for the personal application? Just like the bee knew that to survive it needed food and protection and thus was clinging onto one of the last blooms of the season, I never lost sight of what would sustain me. There have been so many times in the last couple years I have cried out to the Lord in raw, messy distress, but despite it all, I knew where to turn. I didn’t fly away somewhere else thinking I could find another home. No, I know where my home is. It’s in the protection of my Father. He is my refuge, my sustainer, and the one who gives me peace.

Sprinkled throughout the pathways between my raised beds were random snapdragon blooms. Snapdragons have always been one of my favorite things to grow - the vibrant colors and unique shape bring so much life to the garden. Because money was tight, I didn’t buy any snapdragon plants this spring, which was something I was pretty salty about. In His kindness, though, the Lord gave me snapdragons from previous blooms that had reseeded themselves in random places in the garden area.

As I plucked the last of the withering snapdragons from the walk ways, Holy Spirit showed me that the work I had done previously was carried over into this season. Things that He had taught me, scripture He led me to previously, and wounds He had healed me of already are some of the very things that give me strength today. The work we do does not go to waste.

In my garden, there is one raised bed that hasn’t been completely cleared out yet and that is the box that contains dahlias. This was my very first year growing dahlias. In all honesty, I had been afraid to grow them! I had heard from so many that they are delicate, finicky, and need a lot of maintenance - even in my good seasons of gardening I knew I wasn’t ready for all of that. But, one of my friends had a few extra tubers that she didn’t have space for and asked if I would be interested in them for my garden. I had the space, and love the blooms, so I happily accepted the gift. These six dahlia plants were the highlight of my garden this year! They were strong and healthy, and each new bloom brought a sense of excitement because I didn’t know what the variety of each tuber was.

The plants remain in the box for a bit because I need to do a little research on how to care for them over the winter, but nevertheless, the Holy Spirit spoke to me through them too. He reminded me that they were a gift from a friend, as were my tomato plants - the two things that performed the best in my garden this year. What a blessing it is to have community. It has seemed like a season of lack in many ways for us as we have tightened up our budget and done away with some of the creature comforts that we had grown accustomed to, but one thing we certainly do not lack in is the richness that is our family and friends. That Saturday afternoon I not only stopped to thank God for our friends (something I do often), but He showed me exactly how instrumental they have been through this season. I have leaned on my relationships in ways that my pride would have never let me do before. But this year, God has shown me that our family and friends are truly the bright spot in our life right now.

From where I am sitting to type this I can look out into my empty garden boxes. The Lord is just so good. So faithful. He wastes nothing.