Genesis 2:15 states that “God proceeded to take the man and settle him in the garden of Eden.” While this might appear to indicate that man’s creation took place outside the garden, it may simply refer to God’s ‘taking’ man in the sense of his forming and creating him from the earthly elements, then assigning him to reside initially in the garden in which he came to life. The cultivation and care of the garden was man’s work assignment.

After Adam’s banishment from the paradisaic garden, with no one to “cultivate it and to take care of it,” it may be assumed that it merely grew up in natural profusion with only the animals to inhabit its confines until it was obliterated by the surging waters of the Flood, its location lost to man except for the divine record of its existence.​—Ge 2:15.