Whose Garden Was This?

The year was 1978 and I had a new roommate after transferring to my second college. Unlike my freshman-year roommate, this roommate had a limited record collection, but one album she did have was called Whose Garden Was This, by John Denver.

It's not his best-known work, and the title song was written not by him, but by Tom Paxton. But it may have had more to do with crystallizing my commitment to environmental sustainability than any other single thing I experienced as a young person.



Here are the lyrics, as written by Paxton:

Whose Garden Was This?

Whose garden was this?
It must have been lovely.
Did it have flowers?
I've seen pictures of flowers,
And I'd love to have smelled one.

Whose river was this?
You say it ran freely?
Blue was its color?
I've seen blue in some pictures,
And I'd love to have been there.

[Chorus:]
Ah, tell me again I need to know:
The forest had trees, the meadows were green,
The oceans were blue and birds really flew,
Can you swear that was true?

Whose gray sky was this?
Or was it a blue one?
Nights there were breezes?
I've heard records of breezes,
And you tell me you've felt one?

Whose forest was this?
And why is it empty?
You say there were bird songs?
And squirrels in the branches,
And why is it silent?

[Chorus]

Whose garden was this?
It must have been lovely.
Did it have flowers?
I've seen pictures of flowers,
And I'd love to have smelled one.

John Denver's version leaves out the verse about the empty forest (I assume to get it to a reasonable length on the recording).

His version was never played on the radio, as far as I know. The album came out in 1970, the year before Poems, Prayers and Promises, which included his first big singles ("Take Me Home, Country Roads" and "Sunshine on My Shoulders").

"Whose Garden Was This" still brings tears to my eyes, and I don't know if that's because I'm a sentimental sap for the days of my youth or if it would have that power over at least some other people.