The landscape leading up to the celestial garden proper, ambiguous in its geographical location, includes the traditional garden motifs discussed earlier. A gentle daylight shines over it. In proximity to the garden proper, there is the great waterfall mentioned earlier as one of the boundaries of the garden in Magician’s Nephew and Dawn Treader, dividing Aslan’s Country from Narnia. Water is abundant. There are blue lakes and “tons of water every second flashing like diamonds in some places and dark glassy green in others” (Battle 215). Jewels and glass pertain to the heavenly Jerusalem as has been discussed with respect to Dawn Treader. And as readers have been expecting all along, there, on top of “a smooth green hill” (Battle 219) lies the garden, complete with a green wall enclosing trees with leaves like silver and fruits like gold. These motifs harken back to the Miltonic and classical gardens of Magician’s Nephew and Revelation 21:18-22. The medieval poem Pearl describes a similar vision of paradise:
As bornyst sylver the lef on slyde³,
That thike con trylle on uch a tynde.
Quen glem of glodez agaynz hem glyde³,
Wyth schymeryng scheme ful schrylle they schynde.[8] (77-80)
The garden has great golden gates which swing open only to the elect. And through the gates, they pass “into the delicious smell that blew toward them out of that garden into the cool mixture of sunlight and shadow under the trees, walking on spongy turf that was all dotted with white flowers” (Battle 222). This passage is redolent with Christ’s presence: the “sunlight” is an icon of Christ; the “shadow” takes us back to Canticles 2:3 and to The Magician’s Nephew, with the apple tree representing Christ and the beloved (the soul) sitting “under his shadow with great delight”; the white flowers with their heavenly fragrances allude to Christ (Rhodes and Davidson 88). To round out the picture of the celestial paradise, there is a phoenix perched on one of the trees. Used by Lactanius for his own Christian purposes in Carmen de Ave Phoenice, the phoenix is mentioned as an inhabitant of paradise (Pearsall and Salter 65; Lewis, Discarded Image 150). Generally, the phoenix is a symbol of Christ’s resurrection. It is important to note that Lewis is careful to describe these pleasures of paradise as sensual experiences first which are later transmuted into a resounding experience of eternal joy.
Finally, inside the garden, at the top of the green hill, which seems bigger on the inside than on the outside, the elect are treated to an Olympian view of the real Narnia. To their amazement (and the readers’) Aslan’s garden is at the center of all real worlds. All mountains with the gardens on top of them discussed earlier are part of one great chain of mountains that circle all real worlds, including the “real” England. The garden of temptation in Magician’s Nephew, the garden of Eustace’s restoration in Dawn Treader, Aslan’s Country beyond the sea-are all “spurs jutting out from the great mountains of Aslan” (Battle 226). The voyagers, and we, have reached the center, the final destination of the Chronicles of Narnia. “Here, then, the blessed will find themselves translated from the thorny world to a place where only the ‘flow’rs of grace’ and all good things grow-a place safe at last from the ravages of the anti-gardener Satan and from all earthly anxiety” (Rhodes and Davidson 95).
The Last Battle, like The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, ends in a pageant, a truly communal experience, with everyone walking in a bright procession towards high green mountains, sweet orchards, and flashing waterfalls, one above the other (Battle 227). Finally, Aslan appears, “leaping down from cliff to cliff like a living cataract of power and beauty” (227), an image reminiscent of the beloved in Canticles 1:8: “Behold he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.” No tame Lion, Aslan, like Christ, pursues his followers unabashedly and finally reverses the catastrophes of Narnia to restore his elect to the garden eternal. And thus so are we in our world directly connected to Heaven through Christ, the Bridge Builder. In receiving his grace, one becomes, as the Psalm says, “like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper” (Psalm 1:3)-an appropriate image to end the discussion on the enclosed garden.
Conclusion
Lewis used classical Christian garden motifs to paint his various gardens as settings for the struggle in the depth of the Christian soul, for the soul’s restoration through grace, and for complete union of the soul with Christ. The enclosed garden with its silver and golden fruit, heavenly scent, and golden gates, perched on top of a hill or mountain is the garden of the human soul, is analogous to the church, and acts as an image of the real heavenly abode of all Christians who receive salvation. Whether Lewis’s gardens focus on cultivating and caring for fruits and trees, on the state of regeneration in the presence of the Lamb, or on the transportation into Aslan, Narnian garden iconography speaks to the Christian soul and inspires it with longing for the lost paradise. As has been shown, the garden is at the basis of Lewis’s Chronicles, and his integration of classical Christian motifs drawn from earlier authors endows it with an iconic role and thus with the credibility to tell the story of the Gospel, from creation to redemption. The divine purpose is clearly expressed through Aslan, by his gift of love, and in the beauty of the gardens. Furthermore, there is a clear movement in the order of the gardens in The Chronicles. As the story of the Gospel unfolds, the garden becomes more of a locus of unitive and communal experience than an individual transformation and purgation. Lewis suggests the significance of the community in the Christian experience-the belief that a true Christian does not worship in isolation, but rather that each develops in relationship with others. No Christian needs to undertake the pilgrimage of faith alone (McGrath 23). In a letter dated March 27, 1948, Lewis turns to the garden as an image of hope in a turbulent world. He writes, “I have always believed that Voltaire, infidel that he was, thought aright in that admonition of his to cultivate your own garden” (Letters 2.844). One would hope that one’s garden has a golden lion in it and a hearty crowd of companions.