God’s Hidden Treasures In The Garden – Shelley Cramm

A CONVERSATION WITH SHELLEY CRAMM, GARDEN IN DELIGHT

Featured image by Corina Ardeleanu via unsplash.com Free use.

I had a fascinating interview with author and gardener from Texas, Shelley Cramm. Shelley’s newest book “My Father is the Gardener” is a devotional in botany and gardening of the Bible.  It is beautifully illustrated, laid out, and brings a rich understanding how God loves to grow His children through the serenity of gardening. My full video interview can be found here. -Kimberly Bloom, Editor

Kimberly: How did you get into gardening?

Shelley:  I got into gardening because of my great grandmother. It usually is someone in the family who that passes along the love of gardening. My grandmother lived in Fresno CA where it is always hot. But you would have never known it because she was would always take us on a little tour of her garden, her enthusiasm and love of her garden. She used to put a little rose in her hair, and I think it was her love for gardening that just got me hooked. And little pieces along the way like and reading gardening books just began to draw me into gardening and I just knew it was something I wanted to do.

Kimberly: There is so much generational knowledge that gets passed down.

Shelley: I think it is! There is so much faith and the passion for gardening that gets sown in.  When I was growing my mom did not have a big area for a garden, but she had a patio, and she would get all these pots and plant them and I just remember her enthusiasm for gardening. She loved to plant herbs, but I also remember her enthusiasm for cooking, and cooking with her herbs and fresh produce, her passion for gardening and connecting her love of cooking with gardening. This is what I learned. Even despite the heat, the bugs, and weather disasters gardening is something I have learned to love. The joy [and serenity] of gardening is forever in my heart.

Kimberly: How did you make the connection between faith and gardening? How did it come together for you? How is quietly watching and learning key to experiencing the serenity of gardening?

Shelley: Well that happened to me because of a little book called Secrets of the Vine by Bruce Wilkinson. In the book he talks about how he stayed at a vineyard and just watched the vine dresser*, and how he cared for and tended the vines. This book helped to bring John 15: 1-17  to life for me.  Vine dressing is another whole level of garden dedication.  All the information that went into the book, Secrets of the Vine, helped me during a time in my life where I was trying to make sense of this big thick Bible. I did not grow up reading the Bible or going to church and I did not have a good understanding of all the Bible stories and how they connected. But when I read this book, and it spoke about the vine, roots, and connection to the dirt, it just spoke to me and helped to ground me, and I could really engage my faith and gardening.

*Vine dressers are agricultural specialists who oversee the propagation, planting, pruning and tending of grape vines in a vineyard. Their goal is to optimize the quality and abundance of grapes used in wine and food products.

I was already interested in gardening during this time, I wanted to find out more about what other plants were in the Bible and the connection God uses to build our faith. It was really a love affair. You know I was trying to find more books that addressed plants in the Bible, and I couldn’t really find anything about.

As I was looking for material to read, I found some books that had flowery devotionals, but I wanted some real connection to my faith and gardening, a book with the real dirt that I could stick my hands into kind of book.  I quickly realized the book I wanted to read would become the book I had to write. A book that connected gardening, gardening practices, watering, pruning and it is all in my book.

Kimberly: Well, your book My Father is the Gardener is not only wonderful to read, but it is also a very beautiful book. Do you have a background in botany?

Shelley: No, I don’t have a background in botany; my undergraduate degree is in psychology, and my background is in architecture. My background is really in the structure and a big heart for art. You know God is beautiful. Studying plants, and the landscapes really ushers you in to God’s poetry and the way His word is structured and there is so many layers to it and it all users you into God’s beauty. My first book was a Devotional Bible. The devotions were included among the scriptures.

God’s beauty in the garden is natural poetry that draws us to His spirit of serenity.

NIV God’s Word for Gardeners Bible. God will meet you personally in your garden and in His. Throughout the Scriptures God has revealed spiritual truth in the language of growing things. This Bible will take you into a deeper relationship with God through the contemplation of soil and soul….

A BEAUTIFUL BOOK TO REFLECT GOD’S BEAUTIFUL GARDEN

Since this was a big Bible, it did not leave much room for pictures, so I knew I wanted My Father is the Gardener to have illustrations that would display God’s beauty that would grab your heart as much as the word. You know when you’re tired at night and you have been gardening all day and the only thing you have left is the energy to glance so I wanted to provide a book that would allow that. We worked with a lovely local artist on a lot of original illustrations and for the cover.

My Father is the Gardener is published through the botanical research institute of Texas, and the press that is associated with that institution, so we had access to their botanical library to use a lot of historical illustrations and to their herbarium so that is where the botany comes in, and we used a lot of their press speculums. People have been fascinated by the plants of the Bible for centuries. So, they are planted around in gardens in our nation and around the world. They are pressed in herbariums some that have been around a long time. Traditions of going back to places you read about in the Bible to unearth historical information about plants is really fun.  I wanted the book to have an ageless quality.

Kimberly:  My Father is the Gardener is beautiful organized. I love how you organized the plants, illustrations, stories, scriptures, and prayers within the book. It is a very beautiful book. So could you talk about some of the people that have influenced you in your gardening practices and how influencing others through gardening that brings forth ministry.

Shelley: My favorite influencers early on is a wonderful woman name Rosaline Cressey from the West Coast who began writing about planting edible plants in your landscape. Now days we call it food scaping and there is a lot of wonderful authors and peers writing on that even today. Rosaline Cressey was the first person to introduce the pull up your front lawn and plant edibles and taught how to tuck in even heads of lettuce and herbs among your perennials. So, your whole garden is all together beautiful, edible, and functional.

So that was an early on influence. I really wasn’t a big food gardener. I was more interested in flowers and the beauty of the garden. So, I tiptoed in with herbs. That was an easy place for me to start. So RC was a big influence, and she came to speak in Texas, and I was able to hear her speak.

Part of what makes a garden serene is it’s power to spark new interests and it’s capacity to keep you humble.

We also had a great gardener in our area that was bringing organic practices and encouraging us compost. You know this is one of the great pass along past times you know. You know we all encourage each other, and you pick up little tidbits of things and you know I still feel like a beginner after 30 years plus and that is normal. There is always something new you want to try. There is always something new that sparks your interest, or a storm that took out a plant, and you have to start all over again in newness and humility that keeps you young, fresh and energized, so you keep going.

Kimberly: There is always something you can learn about gardening, and it is great when you have those folks you can turn to or look up different resources to find out a little bit more about what you can do better, do different, all those things. Could you tell us about a time when someone experienced your garden with you and how that led to a meaningful conversation that went beyond topics of gardening and it went deeper.

GARDENING IS FOR SHARING

Shelley: One of the most wonderful things that I enjoyed sharing was the little plant hyssop. The Bible says in Psalm 51:7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. NIV: and this verse that I am reading about the hyssop, I was like what is this, it is not a common plant here in the United States nor in my Texas garden. So, I ordered some seeds, but it was hard to grow hyssop from seeds, so I order a plant. Hyssop is from the mint family, and it volunteers* so well.

Volunteer plants are those that come up in the garden with no effort on your part. They germinate from seeds dropped by flowers in previous years or seeds can arrive stuck to the fur and skin of small animals.

 Once I started having this little plant in my yard, and it loved my Texas climate it became very hardy.  So, I keep sharing it and that has really led to some really meaningful moments. First of all, my good friends who helped me get started with all this plant research, I divided some of my hyssop and gave her some and now she keeps dividing it and giving it to others. The favorite thing I love about this is that hyssop was part of the cleansing ritual and even David said in the Bible “cleanse me and I will be cleaned”.

The incredible moments of serenity you can experience in the garden are especially important to share with others.

And it was the last herb that scripture states were raised up to Christ as He was dying while on the cross. hyssop is a very fragrant herb, and it is from the oregano family, so it has a little bit of oregano scent. So, as I pass it along, I relate how this herb was probably the last scent that Christ smelled before He left earth. And Jesus was a man of the earth, and He was fully human, He walked the land, He lived here, and He knew the land and just to think that hyssop was something that Jesus smelled before He made His sacrifice for us. It is a beautiful moment to have in your garden and to share with others.

Kimberly: You know we live in such a busy society and to be a mother. You’re a mother of five so you know what it is like to be a busy mom. What kind of suggestions would you give to a young family or to someone that might want to garden but is not sure what to do or where to start and how to do it with young children?

Shelley: My first suggestion is do it! Dig in and be very forgiving of yourself. This is not an adventure perfectionism by any means. It is an adventure in life! It’s an adventure to engage with the earth. Put your phones down and go outside with your kids. Kids love it and they gravitate to it when they are young. Kids like to be dirty, and get their hands dirty, and they are interested in what you are doing. Children like to eat things, and even if its an edible herb they can nibble on the leaves which brings them right into conversations such as this is how we grow food, this is how God feeds us, this is what it is to harvest things.

Gardening provides wonderful interactions, and the garden does not have to be pretty or perfect. Even if you have gardening setbacks it is okay, just keep going. Gardening always provides us a lesson. Plus, there is a lot of humor out there in the garden. It is a wonderful gift that you can pass along. I confess that I did not do much gardening with my kids when they were young, nor was I a perfect gardener.  But I know when my kids think of me, they think about my garden and my faith, so they have that connection of my garden and my faith.

Kimberly:  What are a few flowers or items do you like to grow in your own personal garden?

Shelley: A little challenge that I have given myself over the years was to grow the “flowers of the field” that Jesus talks about in Mathew and Luke. The wildflowers of the field refer to the Spring flowers that come up in the Holy Land and they are red flowers.

And there is a succession of flowers that bloom over several weeks. Most of them are bulb flowers like Crown Anemone, tulips, and others like the ranunculus family.  So, it’s this red profusion. For example, here in Texas we have the Bluebonnets, so we are blue in the countryside during Spring. The Holy Land is red throughout the countryside. So, I am forever trying to master the red flower profusion in my garden design. One of my new things that I like to grow is lilies, I really like the big trumpet lilies, they grow taller and bloom later, they have such a pop of joy.

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YOU TOO CAN ‘GARDEN IN DELIGHT’

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MEET SHELLEY AT MUSEUM OF THE BIBLE

Join Shelley S. Cramm for the debut of her book, My Father is the Gardener, at the Museum of the Bible Store! As the cherry blossoms come alive in Washington, D.C., dig into the plants, landscapes, and gardening of the Bible with this marvelous book. Museum of the Bible has a special rooftop Bible Garden, and My Father is the Gardener is a perfect companion to catch city views, sip coffee from the cafe, and linger in the beautiful illustrations of our Father’s care and devotion. The book makes a great gift, too! Shelley will sign and personalize your books for you or your favorite gardener.

Wednesday, April 10th, 2023 1:00 – 3:00 pm

Museum of the Bible Store (admission not required to visit store)

400 4th Street SW, Washington, D.C. 20024