Gardens

What is a garden? The idea is so deeply embedded in our experience, culture and imagination that the question seems faintly absurd. We all have images of gardens in our minds: perhaps those we played in as children; those we might enjoy relaxing or working in now; those we’ve had parties or barbeques in, famous ones we’ve visited or seen in books or films; and overlaying all this for the 4.5 billion or so Christians, Muslims and Jews on earth – whether or not they believe in an afterlife – is arguably the most powerful image of all, the Garden of Eden. The significance of Eden, with its mythical description of an ideal habitat from which humans have been expelled (and to which, according to certain beliefs, we might return if we behave ourselves) is hard to overstate. For about half the global population, it holds within it something fundamental about our understanding of ourselves and of our place in the order of things. It represents both a race memory of a real past life (when our ancestors lived as hunter gatherers) and an acknowledgement that, in our rush to embrace modernity, we’ve left something essential behind.