In his chapter on Charity, Lewis compares love to a garden. He uses this symbol to explain that for human love to change from its natural form into Charity (divine love), it needs both God’s grace (freely given divine gifts) and human effort. He says that, like a garden, love requires constant tending—weeding out those natural elements of love and pruning the disproportionate bits that threaten to choke divine love or stunt its growth. The garden also needs the “rain” of God’s grace in order to thrive. Both human and divine contributions are necessary. When a garden is in full bloom, the gardener’s (human) efforts appear small compared to what nature (that is, God) has done, but that doesn’t mean those efforts are dispensable. Presumably, without them, the garden would have run wild, and it wouldn’t have been as fruitful or beautiful.
Garden Quotes in The Four Loves
And when the garden is in its full glory the gardener’s contributions to that glory will still have been in a sense paltry compared with those of nature. Without life springing from the earth, without rain, light and heat descending from the sky, he could do nothing. When he has done all, he has merely encouraged here and discouraged there, powers and beauties that have a different source. But his share, though small, is indispensable and laborious. When God planted a garden He set a man over it and set the man under Himself. When He planted the garden of our nature and caused the flowering, fruiting loves to grow there, He set our will to ‘dress’ them. Compared with them it is dry and cold. And unless His grace comes down, like the rain and the sunshine, we shall use this tool to little purpose. But its laborious—and largely negative—services are indispensable.
Garden Symbol Timeline in The Four Loves
