Can Gardens Mean?

Abstract

Abstract As a preliminary study for a consideration of gardens in novels, this essay examines the problems of investing real gardens with meaning. It suggests that real gardens are incapable of expressing complex ideas and that this incapacity is the primary source of the pleasure we take in them. The essay begins with a fanciful speculation about the origin of gardens and the position of the gardener who wishes to identify with nature while thinking about it as little as possible. The essay then considers some reasons for the current concern with making gardens meaningful based on the marketing needs of the era and postmodern concerns of the academy. It next rehearses the physical determinants of the garden that make it such a difficult medium for the expression of complex ideas: the metaphorical explanations of the critic; the problems of representation; and the current taste for narratology, open symbolism, and critical language that personifies the artifact. The article ends with a consideration of Laurie Olin’s account of Stourhead and the intellectual pleasure of possessing historical information about the garden.