What is an Easter Garden?

On Good Friday, we are inviting people of all ages to join us in making an Easter Garden, which will form a focal point in the Cathedral during the season. But what is an Easter Garden?

You might have seen the Cathedral’s Crib scene on display during Christmas. This shows the baby Jesus with Mary and Joseph, the shepherds (and later the wise men) and the animals, in the stable.  The Easter Garden comes from the same idea, of reminding us of the story through a visual scene.  Here, though, the scene depicts the end of Jesus’ earthly life, and the surprise and awe of his resurrection. 

Gardens play a powerful part in the Bible’s narrative of humanity’s journey with God. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve named the animals and tended the plants before they turned away from God and fell from grace.  In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prays before his betrayal and arrest. And then in the garden where his tomb is placed (near Golgotha, the place of his crucifixion), Mary Magdalene thinks that the risen Jesus is the gardener, before he calls her by name and she recognises him as her Lord.  It might have been a case of mistaken identity, but what Mary said was truer than she knew:  Jesus is the gardener who plants and tends and nourishes us, who restores grace and brings new life and hope. 

It is this last garden which we will recreate, with the surrounding hills, the looming crosses, and then the wonder of the stone rolled away from the tomb, surrounded with flowers as signs of new life. For all who pass it, it will be one small sign of the power and beauty of the resurrection.