Culture Naturale: Some Words about Gardening

Abstract

In the environmental crisis we currently face, gardening has an undeservedly benign reputation. Historically it was the invention of gardening that demarcated Culture from Nature and that therefore lies at the root of our contemporary estrangement. Furthermore, the sense that gardening lies closer to Nature than, say, steelmaking, is also false, in that the garden is absolutely an artifact of Culture (as are most of the plants in it). Through the expansion of the garden in the form of agriculture, Nature has become extinct, and therefore the idea of Culture (as distinguished from Nature) has been rendered meaningless as well. What will the garden look like—what will the garden mean—that is brought into being in a world of only other gardens?