Growing in faith: A professor expresses his love for God through a long-term gardening project
One can expect a mathematician to find certainty in numbers, but math professor Le Hoang finds even stronger conviction, and love, for his faith.
About 12 years ago, the Tarrant County Community College instructor found the perfect outlet to express his two passions with a meticulous landscaping project at his Arlington home, where he has lived for more than two decades.
Faith is in the details
The house, in which Hoang and his wife, Lien, raised their four children, sits on a corner lot in a small suburban neighborhood.
Upon arrival, a winding path leads visitors through an iron gate to enter a small, cobbled courtyard, featuring a statue of Jesus Christ as the Divine Mercy, just steps away from the front door.
“Do you see these rings?” Hoang asked, pointing to circle-shaped details on the iron gate that spans the length of his garden. “We have a lot — 117 of them for the 117 Vietnamese Martyrs.”
Turn left and meet a swath of pebbles forming the image of a rosary.
“I used river rock for the rosary,” he said. “Count here. 50 rocks. Why? For the five decades.”
Continue forward and encounter a statue of St. Joseph overlooking an arched bridge.
“In Vietnamese, ‘prayer’ is cầu nguyện,” Hoang said, explaining that within that phrase, cầu means ‘bridge’ and nguyện is ‘pray.’ “That means prayer is like a bridge to go to heaven. For that reason, this bridge is like when Jacob was dreaming to see a bridge to connect heaven and Earth.”
Lean over the platform to find two koi fish swimming in a miniature pond and five midsized stones resting on a boulder.
“Five loaves of bread and two fish. And Jesus feeds 5,000 people,” he said.
Cross the bridge to view a handmade stone mural of a flaming cross and heart.
“This right here is the tongue of fire for the Holy Spirit. And the spirit is love, and love can’t work without the hidden cross, sacrifice,” Hoang said.
Reaching the backyard, a gazebo and a garden shed are separated by a small pond and a fountain upon which a statue of Our Lady of Grace stands with her arms extended in welcome, facing the back door to the Hoang home.
“When we go to Mary, Mary will give back her all to you,” he said.
A garden full of gratitude
“‘Oh, man, this guy must be rich,’” Hoang imagines passersby must think. “But we know what’s going on took us more than 12 years. Not one day, two days, no. Twelve years. And every month, we would do something — something here, something there — every month.”
The front courtyard, Hoang explained, is dedicated to the Divine Mercy. When doctors discovered a fast-growing fibroid in Lien's ovaries in early 2018, they prayed the chaplet even more often than they had before — more than once a day — and requested family and friends to join them.
“We prayed, called everyone, and prayed the Divine Mercy every day,” Hoang said. When their prayers were answered a few months later, he set off to express his gratitude in his garden.
Hoang finds great joy in sharing the space.
“Everyone is welcome to come in and pray if they want to,” he said. “That’s why I keep the gate open and designed everything as we have: [For all] to come in and pray.”
Ties to the past
For more than 25 years, Hoang was a parishioner at Vietnamese Martyrs Parish in Arlington, where he served as a choir director, director of religious education, and several other roles. He is well accustomed to sharing Catholic teaching with people of all ages in and outside of church walls.
With the onset of online school, many parents during COVID — hard-working and hard-pressed to find a place for their children to stay — left their children in the Hoangs’ care.
“Because of the Divine Mercy, which we prayed every day at 3 o’clock, all of them — about 20 to 30 kids— never had any problems,” Hoang said. Sometimes, he would take them to the family’s garden to pray and learn about the faith.
The time was reminiscent of his childhood, growing up in Vietnam under the vigilant care of a highly educated priest who rigorously taught the neighborhood children the catechism and the Church’s teachings.
From the age of four, Le and Lien would go to church at the break of dawn and then again later in the evening to learn from the village priest.
“He saw us every day, and he explained for us everything. We learned every day, over and over again,” he recalled. The priest had the children copy the Gospel word by word every Sunday and would send kids to check up on anyone absent.
“After 1975, the South [Vietnam] fell to the communists,” Hoang said, explaining the priest’s tenacity to teach the children. “If you were to get a group of ten [adults] to gather together, [the authorities] would come get you, so he chose a way to play with the children, to spread the faith.”
Like the priest who once taught him, Hoang uses his time to evangelize and teach children and neighbors the details of the faith, many of which can be found visually in his garden.
“That’s why I teach them,” Hoang said. “I talk to them and say, see this? This [symbol] is the Holy Spirit. See the love.”