I first met Franklin through my friend, Dianita. We bumped into Franklin in town. This was back in the spring. He told us to come by to see his tulips.

I went with Dianita to see Franklin’s tulips, though I had seen tulips before. I thought, once you’ve seen a tulip, always a tulip. What could be so wonderful about Franklin’s tulips that a person as utterly busy as I am should take time out to see them. That’s how I was thinking. You see how jaded I am, and how wrong I was.

When I entered Franklin’s backyard, I entered a special land. To say his back lot right by the railroad tracks was magical does not begin to describe the world I was privileged to enter into. Nothing says enough. No picture says enough.

For me to begin to show you the artistry of Franklin’s magical garden, I would have to take photos from a helicopter, and then it would not be enough. True, each flower is gorgeous, but to see how the garden weaves its way around in circles with unexpected delight around and around, one spiral leading to another, each turn a breathtaking adventure — I think you have to come here to see it. There has never been another garden like Franklin’s anywhere on this planet. Not even in Narnia. Not even anywhere. This is no garden variety garden.

Just as a child who knows it is loved glows, so does a garden reared by Franklin grow and offer new dimensions. There is such a rose on every cheek of the blessed flowers that grow in Franklin’s garden. They are the princes and princesses of all the flowers in the world.

The photo above is of a certain pepper that Franklin brought with him from Cuba. In this photo, you can get a sense of the vibrancy of a plant that is blessed to be in Franklin’s garden.

I do not have any photos of the tulips. The tulips in Franklin’s garden were twice as big as any tulip I had ever seen and twice as happy.

Franklin told me that peonies would be in bloom next.

Please note. This was not any peony. This was an original Japanese peony like the ones you see in classic Japanese paintings.

And then lilies.

Above you see my friend Robin, a great cook and gardener herself, holding a huge bouquet of lilies that Franklin gave us.

Franklin’s garden is a live thing. It is like a Broadway musical. One scene has a cast of characters, such as the tulips, for instance, and they go off stage, and next the peonies come on and then the lilies. I do not know what flower stars next. What flower stars next, Franklin?

[more words after this series of photos:]

Franklin rents a basement apartment in a house. Franklin has created a Paradise where a Paradise was not. I want to tell you that the fruit trees and vegetables and green and flowering plants all sway together in this unique protected garden.

One year there was an onslaught of grasshoppers who ate up vegetation everywhere. Franklin’s garden was spared. Not one leaf nor petal was touched in Franklin’s garden.  You know you are in a divine Eden the minute you step foot in it. How privileged is anyone to come to this garden.

It needs to be seen on gardening shows on TV and in the House Beautiful magazines. The world has to know that such a garden exists.

It is a perfect garden, but not in the way that gardens are generally perfect on garden tours. This is lush and full and designed and laid out as God would design and lay it out in a unique evolving way. There is a richness and intricacy and simplicity and flow that only God could design.

And when you come to Fairfield to visit Franklin’s garden and to listen to his innate gardening wisdom, you will want to stay in his garden forever, full-well knowing that you are in Heaven on Earth.