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Michael McLeod
What a beautiful extended metaphor. From today's paper.
Now get out there and do some fertilizing! (He says to the bathroom mirror).
"If you are a fan of literary metaphors — and who isn’t? — you already know that The Garden is one of the all-time greats. It just keeps on giving — Adam, Eve and Satan, Mistress Mary, Quite Contrary and the Finzi-Continis all dwelled there. Gardens are all over Shakespeare. In both literature and our lives, gardens serve not just as quiet places of cultivated beauty but also as places of temptation, transformation, exclusion and expulsion. In other words, a garden is never just a garden.
The British author Olivia Laing began thinking about this deeply when in 2020 she began restoring an 18th century walled garden in Suffolk, England. As the pandemic and lockdowns went on, she found her enjoyment interrupted with reservations like: Was this “virtuous” place actually a haven of privilege when a good part of the world population was being shut indoors? This set her on research into the history and mythology of gardens where she learned, among other things, that some of the world’s grandest gardens were places for slaveholders and other enormously wealthy people to hide their sins rather than confront them. She explores all this in a forthcoming book.
She wrote: “Gardens are regularly equated with paradise, but it’s become increasingly clear to me that like Eden itself they are often places of exclusion and exploitation. But I also found paradises that were inclusive, generous and nourishing: zones of inspiration in the challenging future of climate change.”
Our tendency to think of a beautiful garden as a sort of paradise, though, is entirely natural. In his essay “The Healing Power of Gardens,” Oliver Sacks wrote:
“I cannot say exactly how nature exerts its calming and organizing effects on our brains, but I have seen in my patients the restorative and healing powers of nature and gardens, even for those who are deeply disabled neurologically. In many cases, gardens and nature are more powerful than any medication.”
In this sense, a garden is just a garden, a place beyond ethics or human intentions. But Laing’s piece resonates with an idea that applies not just in the backyard or the grand estate but everywhere: The garden itself is neither good nor evil, but the gardener makes it so."
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