The Art of Gardens: An Introduction

ABSTRACT

This volume argues that looking at gardens through the lens of art and aesthetics generates new insights into the role that gardens have for those who make and depend on them. Drawing on some of the debates around the anthropology of art, we suggest that aesthetics provides a rich analytical perspective on the importance of gardens to many wider aspects of social life. We argue for the critical conceptual significance of gardens in Melanesia, and in Amazonia. In doing so, we foreground the importance of diversity in gardening: in plants and knowledge practices, and in the recognition of non-human beings and their collaboration with gardeners. This is, in part, a factor of the satisfactions that people find in growing beautiful and diverse gardens that link to myth, to history and to place. This introduction sets out these arguments and also provides a summary of each of the papers presented in the volume.

KEYWORDS:

• Gardens
• aesthetics
• art
• Melanesia
• amazonia

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We acknowledge the fine work of the authors in this Special Issue and their passionate and sustained interest in gardens and gardeners. We are grateful to Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern for her close reading of the papers and her insightful Afterword. Thanks are due to Heidi Haering and Marian Mitchell who helped in many ways. We also express our gratitude to the external readers and to the editors of Anthropological Forum for their dedicated and invaluable scholarly work.

2 Gell’s argument has been much discussed and disputed, in part or in whole (for example, Pinney and Thomas 2001; Leach 2007)

3 See Bolton 2018 which provides a wider (though still initial) discussion of the importance of trees in Vanuatu.