The Gardener plants eastward a garden

1 The Gardener plants eastward a garden,
where heaven meets earth – Paradise –
and fashions in beautiful Eden
the mortals in whom he delights.
Yet sin breaks our sacred communion,
and causes creation to mourn;
the garden, by sin brought to ruin,
is covered in thistle and thorn.

2 The Gardener laments in a garden,
the side of Gethsemane’s hill,
where, knowing he bears sin’s great burden,
he cries, “I shall still do your will.”
The Gardener is nailed in a garden,
the thorns as a crown round his face,
hands nailed to a tree, rough and wooden,
the garden his last resting place.

3 The Gardener brings life to a garden,
the lily once crushed blooms again,
a new seed is planted from heaven,
life grows from the dry earth of pain.
The Gardener still tends to this garden,
through people who open their hands
to pick up their tools, not to slacken,
but work as the garden expands.

4 The Gardener calls us to a garden
on earth here, a new paradise,
where Eden will see its redemption,
where blossoming life shall arise.
Then cultivate, most tender Gardener,
our hearts, that in us would be born
new fruits, which to God we may render,
who plants life in place of the thorn.

Words: © 2022 Jesse Clapperton

Metre: 98.98.D. Amphibrachic

Suggested tune: Tending the garden* © 2025 Laurence Wareing Download as a PDF

Alternative tunes: Eirinwg by D. Emlyn Evans Download as a PDF. Also consider Geoffrey Laycock’s Harvest, Hymns & Psalms 348 – this requires Jesse’s text to be sung as eight four-line verses.

*This tune is dedicated to the Ministry, Vocations and Worship team of the Methodist Church in Britain.

Ideas for use

This is a hymn that covers a lot of ground. It describes the love of God at work in the world throughout history, and our calling in response to the divine activity. This makes the text helpful when thinking about mission and vocation as well as at certain times of the liturgical year, in particular Easter.

With its echoes of the Great Thanksgiving, this is also a suitable hymn to precede the celebration of Communion.

Additionally, there is an unstated allusion here to the climate crisis (see below), which makes The Gardener plants… ideal for use during the Season of Creation and at other times when the plight of the world is under consideration in worship.

More information

Jesse Clapperton has a gift for exploring the whole arc of God’s vision for the world through the lens of a single idea or image. Here it is the garden and the gardener. Also see his hymns Creator of Colour and Jesus, sower of the seed – both published on The Resource Hub.

As with 'Jesus, sower of the seed', this hymn draws widely on biblical stories and imagery. It traces the narrative of salvation from the garden of Eden to the new heaven and new earth of the book of the Revelation, and along the way takes in Gethsemane and the mission of God’s people (people who “work as the garden expands”). Among many scripture passages echoed here are:

Verse 1
Genesis 2: 4b-24 (the Garden of Eden)
Genesis 3 (Adam and Eve disobey God and are punished – the ground will bring forth thorns and thistles (3:18)) – the theme of sin that “breaks our sacred communion” recurs throughout the history of God’s people, in the word of the prophets and in Jesus’ own laments (Luke 13: 34-35)

Verse 2
Mark 14: 32-36 (Jesus prays in Gethsemane)
Matthew 27: 27-31 (a crown of thorns placed on Jesus’ head) and John 19: 41-42; Matthew 27: 57-61 (Jesus buried in Joseph’s tomb)

Verse 3
John 20: 11-18 (Mary Magdalene supposes the resurrected Jesus to be a gardener, pictured above)
Isaiah 51: 3 (God promises to make Zion’s wilderness like “the garden of the Lord”) cf. Ezekiel 36: 35
Jesus often speaks about the need to labour to make God’s kingdom visible on earth e.g. the parable of the talents (Matthew 25: 14-30) and the parable of the sower (Luke 8: 4-15)

Verse 4
Revelation 22: 1-2 (a river flows through a garden, where trees bear fruit)
Song of Solomon 6: 2-3 (the garden as a place of cultivation, sometimes interpreted as symbolic of love between God and God’s people)

It is hard, also, not to note the climate crisis as one context for these words – the thought that the cultivation of our hearts may be at one with the cultivation of new life in God’s world. Nevertheless, though the language of Jesse’s hymn sometimes has a melancholy feel (“Yet sin breaks our sacred communion, and causes creation to mourn”), there is an underlying hopefulness at all times, and a tenderness that Jesse ascribes first and foremost to the Gardener.

Jesse Clapperton

Jesse lives in rural northern Ontario, Canada. He began writing what he calls "hymnic poetry" at the beginning of the Covid pandemic "as a way to escape what was happening around me", only to discover that the process "ended up being an enriching experience that involved much self-learning". Also see Jesse's Creator of Colour, of tone and of tincture and Jesus, sower of the seed (website only).