Laura Paquette - Ecology of Eden Ch 20

 This chapter of Ecology of Eden really resonated with me. I personally have had a love and attraction to the English gardens. It could have been related to the copious amounts of English gardening shows I've watched. However, I would like to think that it was because English gardens resembled an odd taming of the wild. For me, I understand French gardens to be a sort of "dominance" over the wild in contrast to the "taming" of the wild in English gardens. From the way the French would manicure bushes and trees to how they controlled the landscape to focus on the bare, it shows a deeper connection to the way the French viewed or interacted with nature: something to be dominated. 

On the other hand, the English see gardens as something to be tamed. They put borders and retaining walls to contain the wild, limiting its capabilities, but honoring it for what nature is - chaotic. In its own way, nature is chaotic, growing where it can. In English gardens, this is represented in how they allow native flowers and bushes to overreach their designated space so that they reach into spaces not belonging to their own. This is the way that nature grows in the wild, without a care for the lines and boundaries we set up. I prefer English gardens because of this reason. It resembles a meadow one would encounter on a walk in the woods. The French gardens, on the other hand, feel harsh to look at, like a perfectly orchestrated landscape, always to be kept like that into the future. I believe that nature is not supposed to resemble a frozen painting as new growth comes and shows the resistance and strength of the plant. It is in the endeavor that one receives the most beautiful, more "natural" looking gardens, in my opinion. Just another things humans seek to have in their control. 

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