Gardening to the glory of God

By Mags Storey  |  Ontario Correspondent

Angela ElzingaCheng and her children grow food to share with their community in local garden. PHOTO: COURTESY ANGELA ELZINGACHENG

TORONTO, ON—Gardening is a vital form of Christian witness, one that too many churches are ignoring, says Paul Abell, stewardship coordinator for A Rocha.

"I think the Church in general is pretty slow to pick up on caring for creation as part of our faith," Abell says. "We tend to mimic a lot of society…and the rest of society is not doing that great a job."

The international Christian conservation charity has launched an environmental toolkit for Canadians called Ecocongregation aimed at helping churches consider environmental issues as part of their life and mission.

It includes a module on the importance of planting gardens, including both contemplative prayer gardens and food-producing community gardens.

"Planting a garden is a great opportunity for a church to become engaged in the broader community," Abell says, "People love to see things grow. They drop by and feel very emotionally and spiritually uplifted. I've been involved in a lot of different things in church, but I don't think I have ever seen anything as good at connecting a church with its neighbours."

Garden as community

FoodShare in Toronto is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing food access through grassroots initiatives. While the organization is not faith-based, many of its food projects are based at churches.

Angela ElzingaCheng, a community food animator, says that gardens play a role in fulfilling the biblical mandate to create a welcoming community.

"Isolation is a huge problem in urban areas," she says. "Places to just be together don't exist in a lot of communities. Community gardens are a vibrant space…a place where people can interact, share stories, share experiences and make friends across cultures and across generations.

"One mother and son, who just moved here from China, [initially] had no friends. They started coming to a community garden, meeting people and learning English. The mother told me, 'My son has become a different person through coming to the community garden'.

"My own family comes into this space where my three-year-old can interact with nature. He can play with water. He can get dirty. It's a safe place where my kids can experience life."

Prayer garden

An hour's drive away in the rural community of Baxter, Anne Brolley, owner of Hummingbird Nurseries, has designed a contemplative prayer garden outside Living Faith Community Presbyterian Church.

The wheelchair-accessible perennial garden includes interactive elements like stones, water and art pieces. Brolley says that often when she enters the garden, she finds people have been moving these elements around. On one visit she discovered someone had built a rock tower. On another she found the word "love" written in stones beside the path.

"People change the face of the garden," Brolley says. "It's like a canvas."

The garden was created with plants donated by the congregation. "We wanted people to have a real sense of ownership in it," she says.

While there are more than 20 different species of perennials, Brolley says they blend together well like "different people do." With the help of local farmers, she is hoping to turn a depressed patch of lawn into a picturesque bog.

Understanding God

Both types of gardens have an important role to play in community building and in preserving God's creation, Abell adds.

"I especially see value in planting native species, because you're putting in plants that God has created for that environment," Abell says. "If you want to plant gardens in a place where there was once grass or a parking lot…whether it is a food garden or a flower garden…you are helping slow down the process of too much run-off water overwhelming our water treatment plants and sewers.

Abell adds that restoring God's creation is also part of demonstrating God's love and values.

"As Christians we have a unique perspective to bring to environmental issues," he says, "We learn about God through studying creation. So if we don't have a connection to creation it's like ripping pages out of the Bible, because it removes a way that God can speak to us."

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