Gardens are us, We are Nature: Transcending Antiquity and Modernity^*

* I thank David R. Harris, Walter L. Meagher, Miles Richardson, Paul Robbins, and Philip L. Wagner for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of this article and, most of all, Clarissa Kimber, with whom I have had the distinct privilege of walking through countless gardens in locales as diverse and as distant as northern New Mexico, northwestern Mexico, the Yucatán Peninsula, the Dominican Republic, and Peru.

Abstract

The history of gardens and the history of humans are linked inextricably, especially in the context of environment. As people and their institutions have changed, so too have gardens. This brief essay illustrates some important aspects in the evolution of gardens, exploring three seemingly discrete, but actually interconnected, notions: the antiquity of gardens, combining archaeological data with ethnographic parallels; the role of gardens in the changing spatial manifestations of agriculture, from dump heaps to amber waves of grain; and the transformation of domestic space, the literal and figurative reconstruction of garden fences into house walls. Changes are discussed as inadvertent products, rather than as consequences of deliberate actions. Modern ideas about categorizing landscapes are challenged further. The nature/culture dualism is a myth even at the household scale, as is our traditional way of looking at the world.

• gardens
• houses
• landscapes
• modernity
• nature

Additional information

Notes on contributors

William E. Doolittle

Dr. Doolittle is the Erich W. Zimmermann Regents Professor in Geography, University of Texas, Austin, Texas 78712.