Inside the Territorial Garden

1- The garden as a meeting place between Humans and Nature

Gardens through history have had different shapes and different functions according to the beliefs and cultures of societies; but all tried to describe a space where abundance and beauty could have been possible.

Gardens origins and the fertility myths

“We find in almost all civilizations, that (the original myth) of the separation of earth and sky. And it is a most essential bond, because the garden is born precisely from this sharing. It reveals the deep foundations of the soil by its rocks, its wells, its springs, and at the same time, it turns to the sky because plants need air, rain and sun. “ (Michel Baridon; 1998)

The water mirror reconnects the sky with the ground

Cromarty Firth, Scotland; Personal Picture; 18.10.2020

The history of Gardens is fascinating. Despite the diversity of human cultures around the world, this original myth described by Michel Baridon, this separation between heaven and earth (2), is common to all of mankind. This separation allows the emergence of a living space where plants and animals can evolve and where humans are responsible for the spatial organization of this new space.

Despite an anthropocentric vision, these myths already recognized the critical zone at the time and highlight this primordial relationship that humans have with non-humans. The garden has therefore been, since its origin, the privileged meeting place between Human and Nature. Moreover, in these myths there are no limits between garden and landscape, between garden and the world. The whole planet is a garden emerging from this separation.

Garden and Landscape: one and the same space

Throughout history, the notion of garden has evolved in accordance with the beliefs and cultures of those who built them. In the West, the division between Garden and Nature then Garden and Landscape was influenced by the Judeo-Christian religions. This division has its roots in the deserts of the Middle East.

Indeed, Oasis represented for Persian people, of the past the place where life was possible in the middle of the desert. There was an inside and an outside of the oasis. They called it pairidaeza and started to organize these spaces in relation to their behavior and beliefs. The first gardens appeared in a spirituals sense and not only for food production. Later, the Greeks translated this word into paradeisos. The words paradis in French, as paradiso in Italian and paradise in English all came through Christianity. They all describe the Garden of Eden where abundance of resources and life for humanity were given by God in cntrast with the desert where the environment was dangerous and everything dies. However this distinction between garden and landscape disappeared progressively:

“During the Renaissance, when the squaring traced a clear dividing line between garden and landscape, the latter saw itself recognized as a place where Nature triumphed. The nature of this dialectical relationship changed in the following century […]. By extending its central axis to the horizon (3), the garden absorbed the landscape and created a continuum where, as we have seen, art and nature formed a whole […]. But since then, the horizon has grown steadily. [...] at every step, the garden has found itself associated with the widening of perspectives and the emotional tightening between Man and Nature “(Michel Baridon; 1998)

Central axis to the Horizon

17th century, Louvre Museum, Department of Graphic Arts; http://lenotre.chateauversailles.fr/parcours_en/pointsde-vues_en.html

As Michel Bardion describes it, the garden and the landscape are one today because Humanity is able now to apprehend not all of its landscapes but also of the Earth itself with the putting into orbit of satellite observation. However, can we talk about garden if there is no relation with non-humans? Can we talk about garden when people are insensitive to their surroundings? What then is this relationship that must be put in place for our own survival?

Human and Nature, Garden and Gardener

“Ecological finitude is a discovery of our time: this awareness that the quantity of life is limited, nonrenewable, breaks completely with the still historically recent idea of a perfect and indefinite nature. And this ecology bluntly shatters the romantic view of the universe. The Earth passenger then becomes accountant of his heritage, gardener of his landscape” (Gilles Clément; 1995)

Gilles Clément has long tried to theorize this special relationship with nature as well as our role as a gardener and passenger on Earth. Indeed, since we have an impact on our environment, we have the duty and the responsibility to garden ourselves, learn to live with others and to garden our environment in order to balance the flows inside the critical zone.

Aktion im Moor ; Beuys rubs himself with the mud that he first dug up with his hands

1971 ; photo Gianfranco Gorgoni; Paul Getty Museum

The German artist Joseph Beuys tried through the performance (4) in 1971 to reconnect directly with Nature by emerging himself in a swamp. This symbolic act was in total opposition to the modernist aspirations of the time but also contrary to our idea of swamp. Indeed this kind of space was considered by many to be a non-place. By doing that, he tried to interact directly with the natural processes instead of just admire them. He wanted to be part of these fluxes who make life possible and by recovering his body with mud he tried to reconsider the mud not just as dirty element in decomposition but something that can engenders Life.

Understanding these processes and reconsidering our own relation with Nature are the first steps to be a gardener