Gardens can be good places to think. A pleasant location and a topic worthy of contemplation is the garden itself and our relationship to the natural world. From across the globe, an array of insights and opinions has ensued from this ubiquitous reflection. Though common opinion and cultural traditions normally frame the subject, truly original insights regarding gardens continue to revitalize the topic. The natural world contains a large cast of characters. Until we share the senses of insects or can think like a bee, striking grand postures to match our omniscient insights and enviable scientific objectivity may be as much theater as substance. Truly thinking outside the box, in a non-human way, is not really an option. Despite our less than perfect abilities, gardens can still tell us a lot about the natural world and ourselves. And they can be very hard places to leave.

      A Brief Tour of Gardens:
• The raked-gravel Zen Meditation Garden has carried abstraction to a point near alienation. As if it represented the lovely bleached bones of some de-fleshed organic garden. Its austerity and lack of excess color may encourage detachment and transcendence.
• The cornucopia of color, form, and scent spilling from the English Cottage Garden are a ravishing feast for the senses. Buried in bowers of blossoms, wading knee-deep in petals like some Roman banqueter, yielding body and soul to a Dionysian high, the rose-covered cottage, beyond its quaint façade and well-weeded borders, celebrates sensuous fecundity.
• The nature-is-so-large-and-you-are-so-small National Park vista. By sympathetic resonance we vibrate outward to cosmic dimensions. An expansive head-trip and priority changer.
• The Landscape Garden, outdoor room, and botanical theater provide a manicured backdrop to fountains, follies, statuary, and modern art. A “natural” landscape maintained by an army of invisible workers; a clean, safe diversion for the unhurried.
• The Magical Garden of fairies, moon-lit forest creatures, and groves of whispering trees allows communion with nature. The anthropomorphic inhabitants and helpful guides tell us that nature, though otherworldly, is knowable and nurturing.

      So, is one view of nature inherently superior to others? What possible authority could answer that question? If anything, nature seems to meet our searching glance with a perfect poker-face of inscrutability. But perhaps that is the right “response”; behind what we do in fact know about the natural world stretches vistas of what we don’t. Perhaps that ambiguous expression challenges our understanding in an encouraging way. But if you get tired of the endless struggle to understand, at least you can relax and enjoy the surroundings.