Adventures in PA: Rodef Shalom Biblical Botanical Garden

Perhaps you’ve heard amazing things about visiting the Holy Land and how it really deepens your understanding of the Scriptures and just brings the Bible to life . . . but in this homeschooling season, the trip is a distant dream. Well, in today’s adventure, we are going to visit a little bit of the Holy Land—a little closer to home! This hidden gem is the Rodef Shalom Biblical Botanical Garden in Pittsburgh’s college neighborhood of Oakland. It is the country’s largest biblical botanical garden and was established by a passionate gardener and her husband.

But how were creators Irene and Walter Jacob going to make a biblical garden, with both tropical and temperate plants, thrive in America’s mid-Atlantic region? The Jacobs’ solution: the garden would be open only during the summer season; each September, the volunteers would carefully dig out over a hundred plants and take them to a greenhouse outside the city to overwinter.

Bring your Bible on this adventure; the Biblical Botanical Garden endeavors to not only expose you to biblical flora but also to expressly call the Scriptures to mind: each plant native to Israel is carefully marked with its name and one of the Bible verses which specifically mentions it. The gardeners chose to also include and distinctly label other plants whose names allude to the Bible due to their testimony of the Bible’s global influence. It is a sweet horticultural encouragement of the Great Commission and how God can use any gift or talent to bring Himself renown!

Admission to North America’s largest biblical garden is free and the garden provides docent-led tours for groups as small as eight. (This was temporarily suspended due to the pandemic, but in its place the garden provides a wonderful audio tour[1] to guide you in your exploration.) We learned about the garden’s history and plants, how papyrus is made, why some people believe that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was an apricot (rather than the oft-depicted apple), and how Israel was once the largest exporter of citrus fruit. If you cannot come in person to visit, consider pairing the audio tour with a book or web search of Holy Land photos.

The entrance to the Rodef Shalom Biblical Botanical Garden is discretely marked by a little carved stone.

The garden has a special theme each year focusing on the horticulture or daily life of the ancient Near East; in pre-pandemic years, the garden also sponsored relevant educational lectures. In 2021, the theme focused on the common beverages of the ancient Near East. Plenty of edible plants and information abounded to help bring the biblical world to life for its visitors; we took the opportunity to bring the lesson home by making our own grape juice and comparing the convenience of a juicer with the efforts of a traditional wine press. The 2022 special theme will be “The Healing Garden.”

There is ample opportunity for meditation and reflection, how long you spend in the garden is up to you. My eldest son and I enjoyed sitting on a bench for a while talking about the garden and anything else that came to his mind. Although I loved this peaceful and relaxing bonding time with him, my favorite memory of this garden will be our impromptu Bible lesson at the cedars.

The garden layout first welcomes you to imagine the Dead Sea region of Israel.

The garden’s arrangement is representative of the Holy Land’s geography; visitors are welcomed across a little bridge into the garden, which opens with a view of a pond surrounded by plants that grow in the arid region of the Dead Sea. As you continue through the garden, a stream calls to mind the Jordan River flowing from the Sea of Galilee until you return to the bridge. Here at the bridge, at the beginning and end of the journey, are two cedar trees native to the region of northern Israel and Lebanon.

At the end of our visit, I let my children touch the trees and started asking them some leading questions—were the trees strong? (Yes—cedars were used to build Solomon’s temple.) Were they tall? (Yes, very.) Was their growth upright or twisting and curvy? (Upright.) Were they sturdy? (My boys tried to push them; they didn’t sway a millimeter.)

Psalm 92:11 says, “The righteous . . . will grow like a cedar in Lebanon.” We discussed how those who trust in the Lord for their salvation and for their lives will be strong, upright, and immovable like those trees, and how just as the trees formed Solomon’s temple, all believers are a living temple to God. Sounds like a fabulous lesson, right?

This pond and its flora are intended to call to mind the region surrounding the Sea of Galilee.

Feeling quite proud of myself, let me now confess how God humbled me. Circling the cedar trees many, many times were little holes, the evidence of woodpeckers visiting the garden. I did not see how holes could possibly support my lesson (wouldn’t holes suggest weakness?) . . . so I conveniently ignored them. But wouldn’t you know that my observant sons noticed and of course they asked about them. And so we started to talk about how woodpeckers drill holes into trees in search of bugs to eat . . . and then we realized little by little a spiritual analogy here, too. The woodpeckers are like the trials and temptations that come against us, poking holes at us and helping us to identify the “bugs” (the sinfulness) in our own lives. My sons and I discussed how the cedars were still standing despite the woodpecker’s attacks and we admired the beauty in those marks left behind. And indeed, those holes worked out for good—we were able to stand there that Sunday afternoon[2] and admire this beautiful tree and rejoice in the visible reminder that we can trust in Jesus. We can withstand the trials. We can rejoice in having fellow saints beside us going through the same process of refinement. And we will all be refined and beautified through it.

The garden is lovely and surely filled with many other lessons and metaphors waiting to be discovered—but I would go back time and again just for these two amazing trees. Let us all remember and praise the Lord that “the righteous . . . will grow like a cedar in Lebanon.”

[1] The audio tour is approximately 30 minutes long and is available online at www.rodefshalombiblicalgarden.org/visit-us

[2] If you plan a visit to the Rodef Shalom Biblical Botanical Garden, which is open June 1-September 15 each year, please note that the garden is closed on Fridays and Saturdays for Shabbat.