Whoever has seen great jungles and lush forests, traveling through the world, long to own a garden, just as anyone that has watched his mother cultivate a potted plant in a balcony.  Plants are our friends, living beings that bring joy and are part of our homes, whether they are inside or outside.

 

Seeds, soil, light and water are essential for a garden to prosper, but, above all, a good gardener is always needed.  There is no garden without a gardener to fne tune all the plants notes and make them bloom. Agriculture and gardening are professions proper to the wise, most suitable for the simple, and the most worthy occupations for all free men, as Cicero said.

 

A poet says that a garden has a full Moon and a radiant Sun for a roof, day and night enter without knocking, rain and wind are also frequent visitors, and, sometimes, even snow covers it with its white cloak.  Clouds navigate freely over the tree tops, and everyone who visits the garden is well received and gifted with some fragrance.

 

Gardens are nostalgia for paradise where wonder is easier to cultivate. All of life began in a garden and everything will end in a garden. The book of Genesis tells us how man was created, and lived in a garden where God took walks with the afternoon breeze.  A garden was also the place where Christ resurrected and was mistaken for the gardener by Mary Magdalene.

 

Plants are our friends, that, beside being beautiful, some are medicinal, some are perfumed, and some are edible, but no one like Saint Francis has referred to the sun, the moon, water, and plants, as brothers, making our heart vibrate so much when we contemplate the creation of the Great Gardener.

 

The garden is the place of love and of inspiration for poets and novelists.  A garden also educates us to look at life and at time with tenderness; being born, growing, and bearing fruit are significant because of their beauty, and beauty will save the world as Dostoyevsky said.  The ideal of life is to be eternally in love, as Chesterton said, that is to say, eternally renovated, for love is not blind, but luminous, it does not obscure vision, but makes it more penetrating.

 

When they appear revealed with all their history, people and plants seem much more beautiful.  The gardener, as the boyfriend, sees them with more clarity when he investigates them thoroughly from their origin, which is the most significant part of life. When we know how a flower or a tree grows, it manifest more of its beauty to us.

 

During the night, gardens fill with mysteries and invite us on furtive and silent strolls, where some lantern illuminates the paths, but does not stand in the way of looking at the stars.