Cason Callaway didn’t slow down after suffering a heart attack at age 53. But he did change careers. As the son of a wealthy Georgian family, Cason had made a name for himself as a prosperous textile manufacturer during the 1920s and ’30s. During his professional career, Cason had accumulated thousands of acres of worn-out farmland next to his family’s cabin retreat in Blue Springs, Georgia.

After he retired from the mills in 1937, Cason taught himself how to be a successful farmer. He restored life to the mineral-starved soil. He constructed terraces and planted kudzu to prevent erosion. He became one of Georgia’s leading farmers and one of America’s pioneers in the field of food processing—at a time when food processing didn’t involve robbing life-giving nutrients from produce. Callaway built grain silos, freezer lockers and factories for dehydrating and canning foods so that his crops could be processed and distributed at the local level.

Cason’s innovative business sense and love for God’s creation resulted in a number of new and better techniques to improve and cultivate the land. He promoted his ideas and inventions through the Georgia Better Farms Programs so that others might benefit from his discoveries and successes.

Cason’s heart attack, after a decade of farming, is what prompted one final career move—the one from which he would gain the most fame. After divvying up his 40,000-acre estate within the family, Cason and his wife, Virginia, set out to transform their 14,000 acres into a garden paradise. Cason planted trees by the thousands, built cottages, constructed dams, created lakes and stocked them with fish. His wife, a budding horticulturist from the days of her youth, planted as many as 20,000 shrubs and flowers per year.

In 1949, the Callaways opened their gardens to the general public. They wanted everyone to enjoy the beauty of a well-kept environment modeled after the natural balance that can be observed in God’s creation. They wanted young people, in particular, to see beautiful surroundings. City children, Cason often said, rarely enjoy the wondrous beauty of something as simple as a growing plant.

There is, after all, a powerful lesson in the life cycle of a plant. Consider the lily, Jesus said. Watch it grow. It doesn’t toil or sweat. And yet, every day—even at night—it grows. After constant and rapid growth, at an appointed time, that little plant will burst forth with a gorgeous blossom and fill the air with a sweet-smelling fragrance. Even King Solomon, in all of his splendid glory, wasn’t adorned as beautifully as one of these little flowers, Jesus explained.

Today, Callaway Gardens attracts about 750,000 visitors every year. My family and I toured the grounds earlier this week. It was overcast and drizzly and the azaleas were no longer in bloom. Even still, what a stunning experience! It felt so natural and fresh—peaceful and healthy. It was spacious, green and lush.

Inside the Butterfly Center, the centerpiece of Callaway Gardens, we watched in wonder as 75 species of butterflies fluttered around the simulated rain forest. At the Horticultural Center, we were treated to a spectacular kaleidoscope of tropical plants and trees as well as their sweet-smelling aromas.

During a family bike ride, it was difficult to imagine the surrounding landscape as a wasted farmland of worn-out cotton fields—no trees, shrubs, plants, animals or lakes. In contrasting that vision with the present-day reality, I was struck by what one family can accomplish by envisioning a paradise and then working diligently and lovingly, year after year, to transform that dream into a reality.

“Cason Callaway was a dreamer,” it says in a brochure I obtained during our stay. And his dream came true. Though he and his wife are now dead, “their eulogy is written in the trees, flowers, lakes and woodlands, and in the green open spaces of the Gardens.”

And soon, God says, a much more spectacular vision of hope and beauty will spread over all the Earth! The days are coming, the Prophet Amos wrote, when there will be so much agricultural abundance that harvest time will barely end before the next one begins. Ruined cities will be rebuilt and completely redesigned—all in accordance with God’s grand design. Human beings everywhere will plant vineyards and gardens and then watch as the fruit of their labor actually grows! (see Amos 9:13-15).

To think, what one family—the God Family—can accomplish by envisioning a paradise and then working diligently and lovingly, year after year, to transform that dream into a reality. “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them,” God says, “and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose” (Isaiah 35:1).

To learn much more about this soon-coming worldwide garden of God, read The Wonderful World Tomorrow—What It Will Be Like.