Brilliant flowers. Colorful fruits and vegetables. Impressive rocks.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, three gorgeous gardens graced my grandparents’ backyard. In the center of their fenced lawn stood a young, flourishing tree. As children of summertime, my cousins and I romped our way into every manner of adventure in their yard. We climbed the tree, played cutthroat wiffleball, and built forts. Those hot lazy days now supply idyllic memories, the sort of summers when it seemed like time stood still. My grandparents’ backyard was amazing.

Out in Tolkien’s tremendous story yard, we encounter the beautiful, famous hobbit-hole, deliberately placed in a similarly vivacious realm. In opening pages of The Hobbit, Tolkien described Bilbo’s splendid house: “The best rooms were all on the left-hand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden, and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.” With such description, Tolkien intentionally invites us to see through the hobbit’s window and gain a hobbit’s view.

Don’t miss it. Tolkien planted a beautiful garden . . .

Brilliant flowers. Colorful fruits and vegetables. Impressive rocks.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, three gorgeous gardens graced my grandparents’ backyard. In the center of their fenced lawn stood a young, flourishing tree. As children of summertime, my cousins and I romped our way into every manner of adventure in their yard. We climbed the tree, played cutthroat wiffleball, and built forts. Those hot lazy days now supply idyllic memories, the sort of summers when it seemed like time stood still. My grandparents’ backyard was amazing.

Out in Tolkien’s tremendous story yard, we encounter the beautiful, famous hobbit-hole, deliberately placed in a similarly vivacious realm. In opening pages of The Hobbit, Tolkien described Bilbo’s splendid house: “The best rooms were all on the left-hand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden, and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.” With such description, Tolkien intentionally invites us to see through the hobbit’s window and gain a hobbit’s view.

Don’t miss it. Tolkien planted a beautiful garden.

Tom Shippey observes: “The Shire is indeed a brilliant invention . . .”[1] Tolkien’s masterful crafting of the hobbits’ homeland reveals immense intentionality that reaches beyond simply majestic pastoral scenery we can enjoy. This article explores the nature and purpose of Tolkien’s wondrous backyard, the Shire. Along the way, we will discover the Professor’s very lofty aim. He intended so much more to happen through his depiction. Along the way, we may discover personal implications and an even bigger reason we enjoy the Shire so much.

The Shire was planted to be wonder-filled.

Upon Gandalf’s arrival at the start of The Hobbit, we read: “By some curious chance one morning long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was less noise and more green, and the hobbits were still numerous and prosperous, and Bilbo Baggins was standing at his door . . .” At the outset, our imaginations are captured by the Shire’s beauty. Then Bilbo greeted Gandalf with his famous, “Good Morning!” We’re told, “The sun was shining, and the grass was very green.” From the start, Tolkien deliberately painted with his favorite color.

In his Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien described the hobbits’ nature and their relationship to the Shire: “Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people, more numerous formerly than they are today; for they love peace and quiet and good tilled earth: a well-ordered and well-farmed countryside was their favorite haunt.”[2] The ordering of the Shire included simple governance and marked tranquility. There is a special bond between the Shire and the halflings who inhabit it. For example, Bilbo was called “the wonder of the Shire.”[3] In his careful observations, Michael Stanton noted that both Farmer Maggot and Merry expressed curious wonder with the expression “what in the Shire.” Stanton made the connection: “Our idiom would be ‘What in the world is that?’ To the Hobbits the Shire is the world.”[4] Tolkien expressly aimed for both hobbits and the Shire to exude an ordinary, everyday synergy of abundant flourishing, gentleness, good order, and bountiful farmland. The Shire was their world.

Within the opening pages of The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf and Bilbo are seated inside Bag End, looking out the window onto the garden. “The flowers glowed red and golden . . . ‘How bright your garden looks!’ said Gandalf. ‘Yes,’ said Bilbo. ‘I am very fond indeed of it, and of all the dear old Shire . . .’ Both wizard and hobbit were enthralled with their realm.

The Shire bursts on Tolkien’s scenescape as a burgeoning garden, resplendent with joyous green. Such word painting is extremely deliberate. In his famous essay On Fairy-stories, the Professor supplied insight into his own literary intentions: “We should look at green again, and be startled anew (but not blinded) by blue and yellow and red.” One of Tolkien’s generous aims was to help readers gain recovery, “a regaining—regaining of a clear view” so that we give up drab over-familiarity and possessiveness regarding familiar faces, created places of the world, and nature itself.[5] The Shire is one of Tolkien’s own created places through which we can gain much-needed recovery.

Our beloved Professor further exalts the power of deliberate design: “For the story-maker who allows himself to be ‘free with’ Nature can be her lover not her slave. It was in fairy-stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of the things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine.”[6] Note the wonder in the everyday. Engaging such colorful, bountiful, ordinary places with fresh gratitude is essential for readers’ recovery.

There is glory in the ordinary. If we slow down to ponder, such glory resounds in our own everyday moments. It’s especially true in the Shire, but there’s more. As the larger story unfolds, we discover even further brilliance of the author’s design.

The Shire’s Genesis

Tolkien readily admitted that his Shire had roots in England, being “in an ‘almost rural’ village of Warwickshire on the edge of the prosperous bourgeoisie of Birmingham . . . I take my models like anyone else—from such ‘life’ as I know.”[7] Humphrey Carpenter identifies this location and the resulting Shire as developed from “the Sarehole where Ronald Tolkien spent four formative years.”[8]

In a self-revelatory letter, Tolkien admitted his own relationship to his story characters and their setting:

And there are a few basic facts, which however drily expressed, are really significant. For instance I was born in 1892 and lived for my early years in ‘the Shire’ in a pre-mechanical age. Or more important, I am a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories), and in fact a Roman Catholic . . . I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size). I like gardens, trees and unmechanized farmlands . . .[9]

Note especially: “I like gardens.” We dare not forget how the Shire is situated in the greater context of Middle-earth. And Tolkien was emphatic: “Middle-earth is not an imaginary world . . . The theatre of my tale is this earth, the one in which we now live, but the historical period is imaginary.”[10] Hence, Tolkien was not aiming to create some utterly fantastical other-world or locate his characters in a far-off place in outer space. Middle-earth was patterned after our own ordinary, everyday earth including farms, trees, and gardens.

Roots ran even deeper. Tolkien’s Christian worldview impacted his crafting of the Shire and all of Middle-earth. Such a stunning place in his own fairy-story served as an echo of another lovely place in the “primary story.” Commenting about Genesis, the opening pages of Christian scripture, the Professor affirmed his own belief that “certainly there was an Eden on this very unhappy earth. We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is still soaked with the sense of ‘exile.’”[11] Even in our most glorious moments, we are still missing and longing for our own return from exile, to be  at home in the Garden once again.

With such perspective, is it any wonder that Tolkien deliberately crafted the Hobbit’s realm in Middle-earth to include a luxurious garden? The Shire was deliberately planted with wonder based on Tolkien’s Christian worldview. And though relatively small in the grand scheme, this Shire-Eden glistens as a brilliant green microcosm of Middle-earth in all its grander glory.

An even older garden

Now recall how Tolkien’s world-building reveals Middle-earth’s rootedness in the Professor’s bigger myth, a myth echoing the biblical story. Lisa Coutras spotlights myth’s important role as genre that assists the reader in healthy escape: “In the case of myth, the ‘higher reality’ of transcendental beauty may indicate the ‘prisoner’s’ true home, the truth of an unfallen creation. If humanity was created for an unfallen world, Tolkien implies, then the moving quality of myth is a glimpse of this lost Eden.”[12] Our understanding of the Shire’s Eden-like quality supplies an echo during the Third Age, reminding us of a place even older, an even bigger Eden-like realm of the First Age.

With immense beauty, The Silmarillion describes original creation as “this habitation set within the vast spaces of the World, which the Elves call Arda, the Earth; and their hearts rejoiced in light, and their eyes beholding many colours were filled with gladness . . .”[13] Arda supplies the early macro-view of gardenesque Middle-earth, the grander setting for our eventual micro-view of the Shire. First Age Arda was resplendent with robust colors and garden-like qualities.

Alas, just a few brief pages later, we read: “Then Melkor saw what was done, and that the Valar walked on Earth as powers visible, clad in the raiment of the World, and were lovely and glorious to see, and blissful, and that the Earth was becoming as a garden for their delight, for its turmoils were subdued.” Note the genesis of Arda-earth as a beautiful garden. But we quickly encounter the bold language of battle between the Valar and Melkor.

His envy grew then the greater within him; and he also took visible form, but because of his mood and the malice that burned in him that form was dark and terrible. And he descended upon Arda . . . the Valar endeavored ever, in despite of Melkor, to rule the Earth and to prepare it for the coming of the Firstborn; and they built lands and Melkor destroyed them; valleys they delved and Melkor raised them up; mountains they carved and Melkor threw them down; seas they hollowed and Melkor spilled them; and naught might have peace or come to lasting growth, for as surely as the Valar began a labour so would Melkor undo it or corrupt it.[14]

Across coming seasons, cycles of conflict rolled over Arda. The Valar continued their creative work of “growing things great and small, mosses and grasses and great ferns, and trees . . .” Beholding this creative springtime glory, the Valar gathered for a celebratory feast. Melkor saw this as his devilish opportunity. Unbeknown to the Valar, he began delving and building his underground fortress, Utumno, from which “the evil of Melkor and the blight of his hatred flowed out thence, and the Spring of Arda was marred.” Tolkien’s further description is telling:

“Green things fell sick and rotted, and rivers were choked with weeds and slime, and fens were made, rank and poisonous, the breeding place of flies; and forests grew dark and perilous, the haunts of fear; and beasts became monsters of horn and ivory and dyed the earth with blood.”[15]

Luxurious green was choked out by Melkor’s malicious behavior. His darkness descended. Arda was marred. Tolkien’s ancient Eden seemed lost.

Darker intentions, indeed

Time travel again to the Third Age. Should it surprise us that this little garden’s brilliant green—such wondrous planting—occurred with an express purpose? Tolkien planned his story so the Shire would eventually be raucously wrecked. As the hobbits and Gandalf headed home after the climactic victory, they arrived in Bree and began to learn ominous news. Seeing them off, Mr. Butterbur said,

I should have warned you before that all’s not well in the Shire neither, if what we hear is true. Funny goings on, they say. But one thing drives out another, and I was full of my own troubles . . . you look now like folk as can deal with troubles out of hand. I don’t doubt you’ll soon set all to rights. Good luck to you![16] 

Gandalf informed them: “I am not coming to the Shire. You must settle its affairs yourselves; that is what you have been trained for . . . you will need no help. You are grown up now. Grown indeed very high; among the great you are, and I have no longer any fear at all for any of you.”

Such encouraging words. As the travelers journeyed toward home, Frodo said, “I wonder what old Barliman was hinting at.” Sam proceeded to report what gloom he saw in the Mirror: “trees cut down and all, and my old gaffer turned out of the Row.” Upon their return, they discovered blocked gates, various ruffians, as well as numerous notices and lists of rules. The Shire is dismal and disordered. Houses were missing. “The pleasant row of old hobbit-holes in the bank on the north side of the Pool were deserted, and their little gardens that used to run down right to the water’s edge were rank with weeds.”[17] Now, there were ugly new houses and in the distance a brick edifice bulging black smoke. Sharkey had worked something dark, ruinous and wicked in the Shire. So much like Arda, Shire-Eden’s wondrous order and beauty had been lost.

In the thick of conflict, the hobbits declared the true source of their grown-up courage. To a nasty ruffian, Frodo confidently shouted, “Your day is over, and all other ruffians’. The Dark Tower has fallen, and there is a King in Gondor.” The rascal mocked Frodo. Pippin had had enough: “He cast back his cloak, flashed out his sword, and the silver and sable of Gondor gleamed on him as he rode forward. ‘I am a messenger of the King,’ he said. ‘You are speaking to the King’s friend, and one of the most renowned in all the lands of the West.’ These hobbits had grown tall in courage through their confidence in their King.

Following the Battle of Bywater, 1419 and the defeat of the ruffians, Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin led the way to Bag End.

It was one of the saddest hours in their lives . . . All the chestnuts were gone. The banks and hedgerows were broken. Great wagons were standing in disorder in a field beaten bare of grass. Bagshot Row was a yawning sand and gravel quarry. Bag End up beyond could not be seen for a clutter of large huts. ‘They’ve cut it down!’ cried Sam. ‘They’ve cut down the Party Tree!’ He pointed to where the tree had stood under which Bilbo had made his Farewell Speech.[18]

The scene was tragic. Sam burst into tears. Their “Garden of Eden” seemed lost. Such dark despair actually echoed that earlier time on Middle-earth when Arda was marred. But take note of the hobbits’ newfound courage. Now there is a King in Gondor. Their story was far from over.

The Gardens Restored

With Arda’s demise in the First Age, the Valar relocated and began creating their own new land: “Valinor became more beautiful even than Middle-earth in the Spring of Arda . . . neither was there any stain upon flower or leaf in that land, nor any corruption or sickness in anything that lived; for the very stones and waters were hallowed.”[19] Tolkien’s Valinor reveals wondrous renewal and an early preview of what would transpire in the Third Age’s Shire-Eden.

But we discover an even bigger reason to be stirred by Tolkien’s Shire. Like the biblical story, Tolkien sub-created his Legendarium with grander purpose. Arda was created in glorious brilliance and marred by Melkor’s dark schemes. Nevertheless, echoes of Arda’s original, unmarred brilliance might still be perceived by Elves and humans when they look through eyes of wonder. Lisa Coutras observes:

Although the physical creation of Arda has been infected by evil, this transcendental light remains as a facet of reality. Even within ‘Arda Marred,’ one can intuit the pure light of a primeval reality, Arda Unmarred . . . Men who have a natural affinity with Elves or have been ennobled by them display a “light of the eyes” unique to Elf-kind. As such, the light of the eyes reveals, in part, a purity or nobility of soul: an inner light which allows one to perceive the transcendental light within creation. This evokes a particular response: wonder.[20]

Capacity for seeing light and responding in wonder provides glimpses into how Arda would eventually be re-made, restored, renewed once again.

Scouring and wonderful restoration

After the defeat of Saruman and Wormtongue, the hobbits courageously worked toward even further scouring of the Shire. A marvelous renewal transpired. “The front of the new sand-pit was all levelled and made into a large sheltered garden, and new holes were dug in the southward face, back into the Hill, and they were lined with brick.” Alas, we learn the saddest part: “The trees were the worst loss and damage . . . and Sam grieved over this more than anything else. For one thing, this hurt would take long to heal, and only his great-grandchildren, he thought, would see the Shire as it ought to be.”

Sam planted saplings, and he used Galadriel’s gift, that precious Elven dust. He planted the little silver nut in the Party Field where the tree had once been. Sam patiently waited, and we read:

Spring surpassed his wildest hopes. His trees began to sprout and grow . . . In the Party Field, a beautiful young sapling leaped up . . . It was indeed a mallorn, and it was the wonder of the neighborhood . . . Altogether 1420 in the Shire was a marvellous year. Not only was there wonderful sunshine and delicious rain…but there seemed something more: an air of richness and growth…no one was ill, and everyone was pleased, except those who had to mow the grass.[21]

Tolkien scholars across the decades have recognized threads of applicability between “The Scouring of the Shire” and life in Tolkien’s own post-war country. Tom Shippey maintains, “Rather than seeing it just as an allegory of England in the aftermath of war, however, one might apply what is said there to a more general situation: of a society suffering not only from political misrule, but from a strange and generalized crisis of confidence.” Shippey remarks about Merry’s immense courage to blow the horn of Rohan:

If Tolkien were to choose a symbol for his story and its message, it would be, I think, the horn of Eorl. He would have liked to blow it in his own country, and disperse the cloud of post-war and post-faith disillusionment, depression, acquiescence, which so strangely (and twice in his lifetime) followed on victory. And perhaps he did.[22]

I concur with Shippey’s diagnosis. I love such poignant applicability, especially for our own lives today in the wake of current crises. Now more than ever, we need the cloud to disperse, depression to lift, and our faith renewed.

And I will suggest a blend of understanding and applicability that takes us one step further toward reinvigoration of courage and faith. The Scouring of the Shire supplies us with a profound echo of Eden restored. The scene is so stunning—such a glimpse at glorious change—it demonstrates Tolkien’s fuller-story intentionality. We gain a wondrous glimpse into his rich understanding of divine design for the Primary Story of the Christian faith. Such design can still touch our lives with hope today.

Anticipating an even fuller, final restoration

The Shire’s scouring foreshadows the longer-range, glorious reclamation Tolkien envisioned for all of Middle-earth, including the Children of Ilúvatar. Lisa Coutras explores the fascinating debate between Finrod and Andreth in Morgoth’s Ring. At the center of their dialog is the concept of death, Ilúvatar’s eventual incarnation in Middle-earth, and Arda’s restoration. Wonder and hope serve as chief means by which Elves and Men now perceive Arda Unmarred. Regarding men, Coutras postulates:

Finrod concludes that Men are remembering their true home, the world for which they were created: Arda Healed . . . This inborn memory that Men possess, he supposes, must indicate a creation greater than the Arda in which they now live. Perhaps it is an image of Arda as it was fashioned to become in its completion, with “living things and . . . land and seas . . . made eternal and indestructible, for ever beautiful and new.” Or, perhaps, the present creation is only a faint indication of a new creation . . . For Tolkien, “wonder” is a response to the light within creation.[23]

In Ralph Wood’s exploration of Finrod and Andreth’s debate, he observes the link between Ilúvatar’s incarnation and the final breaking of the curse of death:

If men were originally created for the healing of the marred earth, and if this Arda Remade would deliver even the Elves themselves from the gradual fading away of their bodies, as well as their final destruction at the End of Arda, what new kind of man could possibly overcome the curse of Melkor called permanent death? There is but a single answer, Ardeth replies, a single “Old Hope” that was held by men of ancient times—that Ilúvatar himself should take on earthly life, that the Author of the cosmic drama should become its lead Actor: “they say that the One will himself enter into Arda, and heal Men and all the Marring from the beginning to the end.”[24]

In Tolkien’s long-range Legendarium, the One’s coming to Arda will mean healing from the curse, permanent death.[25] His incarnation also means healing of “all the Marring from the beginning to the end.” In Tolkien’s cosmic drama, this would include the macro and micro marring—all the ruinous dark shadows, the evil curse, those foul deeds of Melkor and all his enemy minions—both in Arda-Eden and the Shire-Eden.

Looking out the window from Bilbo’s hobbit-hole, we see stunning scenes of Tolkien’s Shire. We read immense promise of what is yet to come for Middle-earth—and images of our own earth someday. Tolkien’s Christian faith included such deep roots for our bigger, long-range story. There is true hope that what was cursed and marred on earth will be finally, fully restored.

Divine concepts call us to consider our own quest in the grand story, our own opportunity for an awakened faith in the One who ultimately breaks the curse of death. Someday, the King and his hobbits will indeed fully and finally restore the story’s grand Garden.

The Children of Ilúvatar will be home at last, able to deeply enjoy their gardens once again.

[1] Tom Shippey. J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, 59-60.
[2] The Fellowship of the Ring, 19.
[3] Ibid., 41.
[4] Hobbits, Elves, and Wizards: Exploring the Wonders and Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, 22. [5] On Fairy-stories, 67.
[6] Ibid., 69.
[7] Letters, 235.
[8] J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, 180.
[9] Letters, 288.
[10] Letters, 239.
[11] Ibid., 110.
[12] Tolkien’s Theology of Beauty, 33.
[13] The Silmarillion, 8.
[14] Ibid., 11-12.
[15] Ibid., 28-29.
[16] The Return of the King, 306.
[17] Ibid., 316.
[18] Ibid., 330
[19] The Silmarillion, 30.
[20] Coutras, 77-78.
[21] The Return of the King, 337-39.
[22] Shippey, 219-221.
[23] Coutras, 79-80, analyzing J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth,” in Morgoth’s Ring, 316-318.
[24] Wood. The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth, 160-161.
[25] For additional insights on Tolkien’s treatment of death and immortality, see Dan Cruver’s article of March 25, 2020 at Eucatastrophe.com: “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Redemptive Signature.”