I'm in the throes of pulling together another concert season for my chorus and came across this lovely song.. Moira Smiley calls it "Garden Hymn" and cites it as being from "anon Shape Note hymnals- adapted by various singers" .

Now, I could certainly buy this lovely arrangement, but it would be more in the spirit of Animaterra to find the original hymn and transcribe it myself.

But- it seems fairly certain that Moira Smiley's first verse, opening with "May all into this garden come" is not the first verse of the original shape note hymn. So, any search in my (several) shape note hymn books Indices of First Lines comes up empty. Yes, I will go through each book page by page and look over all the verses to see if I can find the original that way, but I thought maybe I could save myself some time and have an interesting discussion with Mudcatters to boot.

So: does anyone know the origin of this hymn, and where it can be found?