Gardens function as a motif to connote the security of home, ecological sustainability, and the resilience and diversity of life. Lilith builds gardens as a gesture of her loyalty to humans, even though the resisters label her a traitor. The garden is her way of nourishing humans with food grown in the soil rather than produced by the ship, a reminder of Earth’s past as a home to humans. Gardens also come to symbolize home and security for Lilith when her family goes into exile in the forest. Faced with the vulnerability of Aaor’s metamorphosis, Lilith decides “it was time to plant a garden” (84), and the family sets up a permanent home to protect themselves and Aaor from resisters.

In addition to representing stability, gardens also symbolize sustainability. Lilith moves her gardens every few years, knowing when “[i]t’s time to rest this land” (39). Her practice illustrates a care for nature and its natural resources. When violent resisters destroy one of her gardens, the humans demonstrate their indifference to and exploitation of the environment and reenact their destruction of Earth.

Maintaining a garden means cherishing life, and the novel associates gardens with regeneration and growth. Jodahs learns about new crops grown in the mountain village, a sign that even in isolated places, life continues to develop and diversify.