Somewhere special
Have you ever had that feeling that you are in a special place – a place where you ‘feel at home’, a place of comfort, safety and of well-being? Just the other day I was standing in a small orchard of old and gnarled apple trees and there I realised I could feel that sense of place.
Being in that orchard, among those fruit trees, took me back through my life until I found where this feeling of “being at home” seemed to stem from. Retracing my life in my imagination made me realise, as a lifelong horticulturist, what an important role orchards have played throughout my life. But I came eventually to a memory of the young John Partis, experiencing the cherry orchard on the farm in Kent where I was privileged to grow up.
To me, then only a few years old, the orchard seemed vast and eternal. I grew to love that orchard in every season. I enjoyed it as it moved from the quietness of winter with its frosty grass and rime-covered branches into the exuberance of spring blossom. From the carpet of fallen petals to the vibrant green leafiness casting cool shade from the ever stronger summer sun; then the rattles and bangs as humans tried ( and usually failed) to stop the birds eating the ripening fruit.
Harvest Time
Oh harvest time! – long shapely ladders with slightly less shapely ladies chatting cheerfully from the very top of the cherry trees as they filled their wicker baskets with luscious red cherries. And then the season of falling leaves in a cascade of red and orange and yellow. Then once again it was winter when flocks of Redwings made their way from branch to branch, tree to tree through the orchard.
I had no way of knowing then that those relaxed and safe early years would be succeeded by opportunities to talk about, to analyse and design new orchards and to plant and manage orchards of cherries – and apples and pears and plums and cobnuts and walnuts……But that was how my working life played out!
Even today, now well retired, orchards bring to the fore a sense of place that still bring me feelings of comfort, safety and well-being.
The Garden of Eden
But I wonder whether this sense of place might go even further back in time? I’m not the only one to suggest that the first orchard ever created was for the use of Adam and Eve. It was called the Garden of Eden.
This is what Genesis records: “The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” (Genesis2:8,9)
That sounds like an orchard to me! Maybe that sense of place I feel even today goes right back to the Book of Genesis, where the Garden of Eden was the first orchard for man to tend, to manage, to steward. It was beautiful, fruitful, made just for mankind. And Adam and Eve between them lost it! (Genesis 3)
Restoration
So maybe there is a faint ‘folk memory’ of its lost perfection. But what is true is that God has supplied a way for humankind to be restored again – a new Heaven and a new Earth promised through the life, death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ (see 1 Peter 1:3).
In the Bible’s Book of Revelation there are several references to the restoration of the Garden of Eden. Here is just one in Revelation 2:7: “To the one who overcomes I will give access to feast on the fruit of the Tree of Life that is found in the paradise of God.” (The Passion Translation).
I love restoring old orchards to their original fruitfulness, but the Garden of Eden? That’s a job for the Head Gardener, the One who created the Universe! And He is on the job!
All references are from the NKJV unless specified otherwise.
John Partis
bearing-kingdom-fruit.com
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