ISHS Acta Horticulturae 759: XXVII International Horticultural Congress - IHC2006: Global Horticulture: Diversity and Harmony, an Introduction to IHC2006
GARDENS AS ELEMENTS OF AN URBANIZING WORLD |
| Author: | G.D. Groening |
| Keywords: | civilization, garden culture |
| Abstract:
Only civilization creates gardens. Those who garden express a sensitivity which has been generated, promoted and communicated as a result of cognitive achievement. Gardens first emerge as human ideas which then become implemented in a myriad of culturally coined ways of which the spatial arrangement is one of many only. Korean, Japanese, and Chinese cultures have developed the special idea of miniaturizing personal expressions of garden interests. In Europe and North America Greek and Roman urban garden culture may serve as reference. Much as gardens refer to privacy and seclusion such garden culture communicates to a variety of other people outside this privacy. Those who garden communicate with those who breed seeds, who grow vegetables, annuals, perennials, shrubs and trees. They communicate with those who produce fertilizer and means for soil improvement, with those who manage water provision, and those who produce the weather forecasts. They seek advice from master gardeners, landscape architects, garden books and garden journals, and other publiccations. They enjoy garden images and garden films. These and many more impact upon the overall result of gardens as element of an urbanizing world. Not the least mediated through the clerical interest in religious mission a worldwide interest in gardens emerged in Europe which from this European perspective soon reached to the Far East. For several centuries, Europe especially, has established and cultivated schools and universities, and other opportunities for studies in garden culture, as part of a universal civilization. It thus began to offer chances for world-wide appropriation of knowledge for the development of garden culture. Gardens as an element of world-wide urbanization can reflect what makes European-North-American civilisation attractive world-wide. The chance to become recognized as a member of a democratically constituted society. The chance to act in one’s own responsibility and to have options of choice, to be able to have an intellectual exchange free from the fear of imprisonment or even the loss of life. Neither fundamentalism nor fanatism nor war can be derived from that. Gardens as elements of an urbanizing world indicate progress on the long and arduous path to civilized conditions of life. | |
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