School of Philosophy | Melbourne

To Love A Garden

I have often wondered why so many of us love gardens. We devote countless hours working and relaxing in gardens, where we delight in the beauty of flowers, nurture edible crops, share time with friends and loved ones, where we dream our dreams and simply rest in the quiet and peace of nature.  Many of us invest much effort in establishing and maintaining gardens around out homes expending not only valuable financial resources but much personal labour in the endless removal of weeds and other garden chores, dealing with an unpredictable climate and the vandalistic intentions of possums, birds and insects, as well as the disappointment of plants that refuse to thrive despite all our care.

So why do gardens exert such a powerful attraction and command such devotion?

A clue can be found in the fact that gardens are good for us. There is a substantial body of research which shows that time spent in a garden is beneficial to our physical, mental and emotional health. Just 20-30 minutes a week promotes health and wellbeing. Hospital patients with views to a garden heal and recover more quickly than those who do not.

Another clue is the importance of gardens in our creation myths and spiritual teachings where gardens are depicted as places of spiritual significance. In the western Christian and Judaic tradition the Garden of Eden represents a paradise, a place of perfection where man lived in ease and plenty, surrounded by beauty and in perfect unity with his creator.  The garden is a place of bliss, peace and innocence. In the New Testament the Garden of Gethsemane is the place where Christ faces deep spiritual crisis and finds the necessary inner strength to face his approaching crucifixion.  In the Islamic tradition, heaven, or paradise is conceived as a beautiful garden of blossom trees, birdsong, flowers and running water, offering respite from the harsh dry climates that many of its peoples inhabited and a renewal of life in an idealised setting.

Numerous writers, and indeed our own experience tell us, that gardens are places where we can find rest, peace and renewal. No matter how humble, our gardens represent sanctuaries from the demands of our busy lives and respite from a sometimes chaotic world. They are places which can enrich our lives; where we are able to reconnect with nature, beauty and our inner being, to find healing, refreshment and inspiration.

While we may appreciate the significance and benefits of gardens, it is not necessarily clear how to go about the process of creating a garden that will provide us with these qualities. There is a bewildering range of garden forms and it would seem logical that some forms are likely to be more effective that others.  Gardens, after all, are highly diverse. Each reflects the characteristics of the local environment, climate, soils, and plant types, not to mention the character and preferences of each owner, and the finances available to them. We have an enormous diversity of garden forms, and an unlimited number of potential forms.

But the one thing they all have in common is that all gardens are a miniaturised version of the creation itself. They reflect the broader world in which we find ourselves, in that they are all made up of the 5 basic elements of the physical or material world: earth, water, fire, air, and space or ether.

The mechanism by which gardens are able to influence or have an impact on us, resides in the way in which they are perceived. And like our experience of the world in general, gardens are perceived through the 5 senses of sight, touch, sound, smell, taste. The garden above all is a place of sensory delight. There is opportunity for all the senses to be engaged by all the physical elements.

It is one of the fundamental philosophic premises that if we are fully engaged by the senses we will be fully alive to the present moment; at rest within our selves and removed, however briefly, from the restless projections of the mind that catapult us into an imagined future or remembered past.  We are free to simply be ourselves and to experience life and living in the fullness of being. At such times of heightened awareness of our self and our place in the universe, there is often a profound sense of stillness, and wonder. It can and has been described by poets as a sense of peace both within and without, being entirely at one with the world and oneself. It is at such times that deep emotional healing, rest, creative inspiration, and spiritual connection are most likely to occur.

By understanding the effect of the expression of each of the physical elements on us as individuals, we can establish the building blocks for a garden design that will enable us to create a specific sense experience tailored to our individual nature and which has the capacity to bring us completely into the present moment and to deep rest. We must start by observing the responses of each of our senses to the ways in which each of the elements can be expressed in a garden. For example, water may be still and reflective, gently moving as in a bubble fountain, or a loud cascading torrent such as a waterfall. Each of these forms will trigger an emotional response in the being, which may range from excitement to agitation, aversion, peace or reflection. Similar reactions will occur in response to the different treatments of earth (constituting colour, form, line, texture, plants, construction materials), air, fire (which includes light and warmth or cold), and space (involving the arrangement of the constituent components within the garden). Having identified which sensory forms engage you and bring you to deep rest, they can be incorporated into your own garden to be available whenever you need to access them, either physically or in imagination.

The subtle sense of mind and personality also influences our experience of the garden. Through reason and observation we can witness the passing of time and the endless parade of change from day to day, season to season and year to year. The underlying rhythms and patterns that govern this parade are apprehensible as part of the intelligent ordering of the creation, and the mysterious life force which sustains it, and of which we are a part.  This principle may be called many names, but in essence it is the experience of the sacred within and around us—an experience which many find in their engagement with a beautiful garden.

To create a garden which connects us not only to nature and the vastness and wonder of the creation, but to our innermost selves is to create a garden which will nourish, refresh and replenish us in the midst of our busy lives—a garden that we can always return to in times of agitation, tiredness and anxiety to find the qualities of peace and renewal that we endowed the garden with ourselves. It is a garden which is imbued with a sense of the sacred, a garden which we can truly love, as it will reflect who we essentially are, and return us to wholeness when we visit it.

—Lorraine Nadebaum