October 7, 2003

What is a Garden?

            In E.M. Forster’s symbolic story, “The Other Side of the Hedge”, he mentions the word “garden” to characterize the other side of the hedge.  However, “garden” “impl[ies] a certain triviality and constraint” contradicting Forster’s previous description of the other side as having a “blue sky…no longer a strip, and beneath it the earth…risen grandly into hills” (238).  How true.  I would define gardens, in general, as nature-inspired, man-made works of art. 

            Deep within each and every one of us, there is a place for nature.  Nature, a pervasive and influential factor, has always existed since humans beginnings.  As kids we explore the dirt below us, the bugs upon the dirt, the trees out the dirt, and the sky above the dirt.  We kids all seem to find a sense of place among nature.  We grow out of our childhood sense of curiosity for the immediate dirt, bugs, and sky about us, but nature, especially in the city, where there is an apparent dearth of greenery, continues to thrive through concept and memory.  When we feel that too much concrete dominates our world, we decide to enclose a small piece of grass and claim it as our “garden” out of nostalgia.  Within these enclosures we domesticate nature (as we do with all things we own) as if to retain this trivial yet crucial factor composing many childhood memories. 

I would also argue that we unconsciously perform this ritual to honor it that comes before us.  The subconscious guilt of altering so much of what originally existed shames us into preserving the concept of the original work of art.  In a garden, we organized or tame nature in the very same manner in which we tame wild offspring with manners, dogs with collars, and schedules with time.  Consequently, a garden is also the human version of nature affecting a sense of place and time.

My garden runs the exterior parameter of my kitchen.  Annoyed by the disarray of weeds that overran dirt space before my kitchen window, I decided that my 2003 summer mission would be to clean and adopt the space as my garden.  My first objective was to organize what appeared to me unruly weeds.  My second objective was to install and organize a selected collection of plants ranging from mint leaves to carnations.  My third objective was to find perfect placement for my marble and copper wired dragonfly (as seen to the right).  My fourth objective was to finalize garden plans with a low, white imitation picket fence.  In doing so, I discover my sense of place and time as well as benefit from the fruits of my work of art.

            In the Genesis, the Garden of Eden, also referred to as Paradise, embodies a sense of place and time for mankind.  “Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden which is in the east, and there he put the man he had fashioned” (140C) to establish Adam’s initial abode.  Yahweh God instills of sense of place and belonging in Adam.  Although Adam lives among a variety of trees, including the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Yahweh God warns him to never eat the tree of knowledge of good and evil or he will meet certain death.  As the story goes, Eve ate the wicked fruit of the tree of knowledge of good or evil as does Adam.  Since then, the Garden of Eden has symbolized mankind’s eternal suffering for giving in to temptation.  Woman will suffer indescribable pain in childbearing and man will forever till the soil.

            Likewise, the Tower Memorial Garden will forever preserve a sense of time and place as a commemoration of the victims of the 1966 shootings at the UT Tower.  The meticulously placement of “concrete and stone communicate the emotional journey one takes in experiencing tragedy and healing from it as one walks around the pond” (227).  By creating an environment conducive to the sympathies of those who have experience traumas, those whose lives have been impacted can find solace in this emotional sense of place shared by many.