{"id":1238,"date":"2016-08-16T12:32:56","date_gmt":"2016-08-16T10:32:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=1238"},"modified":"2016-08-16T12:32:56","modified_gmt":"2016-08-16T10:32:56","slug":"philosophising-about-gardening-a-singularity-of-british-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2016\/08\/16\/philosophising-about-gardening-a-singularity-of-british-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"PHILOSOPHISING ABOUT GARDENING: A SINGULARITY OF BRITISH CULTURE <\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although this is a short volume, it has taken me a while to read David E. Cooper\u2019s A Philosophy of Gardens<\/em> (2006), which my philosopher friend Marta Tafalla recommended to me. I had assumed that reading post-structuralist criticism had prepared me to deal with most kinds of abstract thinking in the Humanities. I was wrong. Before passages such as \u201cThe meaning of The Garden, if there is one, is what exemplary gardens exemplify. The Garden is appropriate to what it means through exemplifying it\u201d (129), I was still baffled\u2026 Also, Cooper insists again and again that he aims to discuss \u2018The Garden\u2019 as an ideal concept, beyond its socio-cultural material realities and his is a position that I found myself resisting as a Cultural Studies specialist. I ended up eventually combining my reading of Cooper\u2019s book with the delicious documentary mini-series presented by Monty Don, The Secret History of the British Garden <\/em>(BBC, four episodes, available from YouTube).<\/p>\n

Both Cooper, emeritus professor of Philosophy at Durham University, and Don, a popularizer or horticulture famous for presenting the BBC television series Gardeners’ World<\/em> (started in 1968\u2026), are very British in their taste for gardens. This doesn\u2019t mean that other nations do not care for gardening (just think of Japan, or see Don\u2019s series Around the World in 80 Gardens<\/em>). What I mean is that a foreign student of British culture is often mystified by the intensity of the British devotion to gardens and gardening. When I started reading English Literature in its original version one thing I noticed is that flowers and plants were very often mentioned, of types I could by no means identify in my own two languages. I marvel at how many times I have come across the word \u2018nasturtium\u2019 in fiction. As for the famous poem with the daffodils, I learned when first reading it and trying to understand all its words that the flowers are called \u2018narciso\u2019 in Spanish (I first saw one in England\u2026).<\/p>\n

The Spanish gardens most often named and praised are those of la Alhambra in Granada, the royal palace at Aranjuez, the Reales Alc\u00e1zares in Seville\u2013and that\u2019s about it (I know the list of notable gardens is much longer, but here I mean popular). The city where I live, Barcelona, is a disaster when it comes to gardens and parks. Madrid boasts of the extensive El Retiro park next door to the botanical gardens, all downtown and easily accessible. Yes, we have Ciutadella, the equivalent of Retiro in Barcelona but, discounting the zoo, it\u2019s not as big nor as popular. The mountain of Montju\u00efc has several gardens (one even specialising in cactuses) but, well, it\u2019s a mountain, which means it\u2019s not particularly accessible, no matter what the Town Council preaches. One needs absolute determination to visit the botanical gardens there\u2026 I see park G\u00fcell from my window but, leaving the crowds of tourists aside, I find no aesthetic pleasure of the kind Cooper praises in its so-called gardens, too dusty, too unkempt.<\/p>\n

Having enjoyed daily evening strolls in the central park of the small Spanish city where I have spent my holidays I wonder what is wrong with Barcelona and its gardens. Tur\u00f3 Parc, a very pretty little garden which I love, designed by the city\u2019s most revered garderner\u2013Nicolau Maria Rubi\u00f3 I Tudur\u00ed\u2013is now in a pathetic state which is hard to believe. Something then, having to do perhaps with the merciless heat of summertime, which kills so many plants and demands constant watering, has made us, Barcelona citizens, less than keen on gardening. I see the wilting plants in the few window sills adorned with plants at all and I positively want to scream\u2026 particularly when I think of what you can see in Andaluc\u00eda (extremely hot, remember?) and the north of Spain, where even the palm trees imported by the nostalgic \u2018indianos\u2019 thrive.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have a garden, that is to say, a plot of land to grow plants in, but I do have (rent\u2026) a biggish terrace, where I battle daily with stubborn plants that refuse to stay healthy and survive the season. This is why I have read Cooper\u2019s book with a bit of scepticism, perhaps because he does not care for the down-to-earth details of actually growing a garden. I think he makes a wonderfully valid point of remarking that the pleasure we take in gardens is distinctive, and not at all a mixed pleasure derived from our parallel enjoyments of the artistic and natural values of gardens. A garden is a garden is a garden. Now, his main philosophical argument, once the rules of appreciation have been established is that \u201cThe Garden, then, is an epiphany\u2014a symbol, in the Romantic sense\u2014of the relation between the source of the world and ourselves\u201d (150). He himself jokes that you might be \u201cliable to draw a blank\u201d (132) if you approach you neighbour with that kind of sophisticated thought. Nonetheless, he is really in earnest when he insists that The Garden (the ideal place, not any specific garden) exemplifies \u201ca co-dependence between human endeavour and the natural world\u201d and is \u201can epiphany of man\u2019s relationship to mystery. This relationship is its meaning\u201d (145). In gardening, we strive to achieve the \u201cgood life (\u2026) led \u2018in the truth\u2019\u201d; in tending to our plants we learn \u201ccare, humility, and hope\u201d, informed \u201cby a sensibility towards a fundamental truth of the human condition\u201d (157). If in tune with The Garden, we engage in an \u201cappreciation of the place of human beings in the way of things\u201d (157).<\/p>\n

I see you, dear reader, raising an eyebrow, as I did, and thinking that this is overdoing it and that although parts of Cooper\u2019s ideas ring true the whole argument is overblown. In taking care of one\u2019s garden and in appreciating the beauty of someone else\u2019s garden, private or public, we engage in a unique aesthetic pleasure, I grant that. Yet, I fail to see the epiphanic quality of that experience and I feel that it is a much more direct kind of pleasure, attuned to our love of being in places where you can relax and feel in peace with yourself and the world. Um, or is this what he means all in all?<\/p>\n

Monty Don\u2019s mini-series provided me with what I was missing in Cooper: a history of how the aristocratic privilege of owning a park and garden is in our times combined with the privilege of owning a few square metres to grow your own garden. Yes, privilege<\/em>. As a working-class city dweller raised in a flat with just windows (and not even flowers in the windowsills much less fresh cut flowers in vases), I have always felt truly envious of people who could grow plants at home. As a little girl I felt envy of my grandmothers because they had each a tiny balcony to grow flowers in (to this day, I love hydrangeas because one grandma preferred them). Whenever we visited relatives in my mum\u2019s village or saw some house with a garden outside the city, no matter how modest, I grew really moody and resentful. Just by chance I got my terrace, and now one of the main problems in my life is that I cannot afford to buy a bigger flat with an equivalent-sized terrace in absurdly overpriced Barcelona. Terraces, by the way, are often called \u2018solariums\u2019 by local real-estate agents, which gives you a clear idea of what people prefer doing with them: sunbathing.<\/p>\n

The thought of giving up my terrace is simply inacceptable to me. Why? Because no matter how much effort municipalities may put in designing public gardens and parks for their citizens, the real privilege is not having to leave home to relax surrounded by bits of green. This is the privilege that neither Cooper nor Don address. The difference between Britain and Spain (or Catalonia) is that suburban sprawling gave the privilege of owning a garden to low-middle-class and even working-class British persons. In Catalonia geography is our enemy, for the terrain is mostly hilly and you see even in expensive \u2018urbanizaciones\u2019 houses placed in steep inclines, occupying plots in which there is hardly any room for a strip of grass. Having said that, I think that even when we have the space, either in a terrace or a proper garden, we in Spain lack the cultural background that makes gardening a rewarding activity, as it is in Britain or other countries. Perhaps, just perhaps, gardening is too close for comfort to the backbreaking agricultural work many of our grandparents fled as migrants to the city and we want no soil to dirt our hands.<\/p>\n

Watching another documentary, I learned that the major British newspapers have \u2018gardening correspondents\u2019. Also that Prince Charles is a much more respected figure than you might think in the gardening world, which, by the way, has its long list of celebrities (Monty Don is one). I\u2019m even beginning to worry that there might be already a discipline called \u2018Garden Studies\u2019 which I have completely missed (wait for Routledge to notice the gap\u2026). The list of resources connected with gardening in Britain available online is simply staggering and has by no means an equivalent in Spanish (though I recommend the lengthy Wikipedia article on gardening in Spain, https:\/\/es.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Historia_de_la_jardiner%C3%ADa_en_Espa%C3%B1a<\/a>). You might think that gardens make a small cultural difference, and one quite easy to overcome as everyone enjoys a beautiful garden. Yet, my impression is that this is a deeper cultural difference than it seems. Just think of how unlikely the existence of a \u2018corresponsal de jardiner\u00eda\u2019 for El Pa\u00eds<\/em> or La Vanguardia<\/em> is and you\u2019ll see my point. Or try to imagine Queen Letizia showing an interest in gardens beyond the ones at la Zarzuela Palace.<\/p>\n

One last word (or not). Here are three beautiful spots with gardens: El \u2018se\u00f1or\u00edo de B\u00e9rtiz\u2019 in Navarra (an extensive natural park and gardens), El Habana (a hotel with a lovely garden in La Pereda, near Llanes in Asturias) and the Casa Sorolla in Madrid, which will give you a very clear idea of the kind of privileged urban seclusion which a wealthy Spanish person might aim at in the 20th century. <\/p>\n

May you enjoy an epiphanic moment in them.<\/p>\n

Comments are very welcome! (Thanks!) Just remember that I check them for spam; it might take a few days for yours to be available. Follow on Twitter the blog updates: @SaraMartinUAB. You may download the yearly volumes from http:\/\/ddd.uab.cat\/record\/116328. See my publications and activities on my personal web http:\/\/gent.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although this is a short volume, it has taken me a while to read David E. Cooper\u2019s A Philosophy of Gardens (2006), which my philosopher friend Marta Tafalla recommended to me. I had assumed that reading post-structuralist criticism had prepared me to deal with most kinds of abstract thinking in the Humanities. I was wrong. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}