It later appeared in his short fiction collection The Time of Friendship (1967) published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
The man's wife, noting his quiet contentment, secretly suspects that her spouse is hoarding a hidden treasure, and is determined to extract from him its whereabouts.
The local Imam is notified by the man's neighbors that he has ceased attending the mosque for prayer, and that his wife has disappeared.
[4][5] "The Garden" gives a rather unflattering view of orthodox Islam.” Biographer Allen Hibbard in Paul Bowles: A Study of the Short Fiction (1993)[6] “The Garden”, a fable, postulates an inherent conflict between Islamic religious orthodoxy and the order and beauty wrought by individual creative expression.
A man works his garden until it is the most beautiful thing in the oasis on which he lives…All he knows now is his garden, and when he even forgets to thank Allah for his good luck, his suspicious neighbors finally kill him…It is as though, even if the plain truth be that nothing has meaning but what an individual creates out of the promptings of his own nature, that truth will not satisfy the mass of men, who demand some sort of imposed and arbitrary metaphysics.