Books: Gardens & Humanity

From the beginning of time, humans have inextricably been linked to gardens.  In his new book, Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition (University of Chicago Press, 2008), author Robert Pogue Harrison, professor of Italian literature at Stanford University, examines the human need for gardens.  "For millennia and throughout world cultures," he says, "our predecessors conceived of human happiness in its perfected state as a garden existence."And without a doubt, many of us feel exactly the same way today.

Pogue writes about Greek and Italian gardens, the Garden of Eden and gardens of homeless people in New York City.  He reminds us that history "has no memory" of most of the gardens that have "graced the earth," but he notes that "apart from a few lofty exceptions," gardens don't exist to "immortalize their makers or defy the ravages of time," but rather "to reenchant the present."

The book surveys continents and centuries, and draws upon writings about gardens from Epicurus and Homer to Dante and Boccaccio, Edith Wharton to Camus, TS Eliot and Shirley Hazzard.  It's a daunting world tour of nature and perception, and the creativity that goes into garden making and appreciation.

You'll discover entire literary worlds about gardens, right down to Harrison's epilogue about Malcolm Lowry's novel, Under the Volcano. If you're a gardener or a garden designer, this book will reaffirm why you do what you love.  And even if you're not into gardening, it'll make you think about why you love to walk through a park or forest, walk down a street filled with stately trees, or admire a simple bloom in a neighbor's front garden. 

(click on link to purchase book)

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