The Master’s Garden

She recorded the song for Little Bird, her second album, issued by Bell Buckle in 2004. Buller sang lead and played fiddle at SoundWave Studio, with Stephen Mougin on guitar, Wayne Benson on mandolin, Daniel Hardin on bass, and Alan Bartram adding the harmony vocal.

The singer is near the end of life, in the winter of it, and asks not to be grieved: when the body is laid under the clover, the soul’s springtime begins. The chorus longs to bloom in the Master’s garden, forgiven, alongside the saints who went before. A later verse looks across the Jordan to a garden full of loved ones kneeling beside the Savior, and the last one turns the planting image on the listener: roots set deep in God’s promise, a heart of stone softened by Christ’s blood, and a home in that garden.

Other groups took it up. The Bankester Family recorded it, credited to Buller, for their 2008 album Somewhere in Between on Covenant Hill, with Emily Bankester singing lead and Buller herself on clawhammer banjo, and the Tuttles recorded it with A. J. Lee for an album on Back Studio. Buller went on to win ten IBMA awards; in 2016 she was named both Fiddle Player and Female Vocalist of the Year, the first woman to win the fiddle award.