The sweet taste of soil. Gardening with all the senses in Greco-Roman literature

Abstract

This paper argues that sensory-based methods of gardening have the potential to offer a form of self-awareness, to create memories, and to shape a meaningful relationship with nature. In this way, sensory gardening contributes to human well-being by enriching people’s lives with meaningful moments. Contemporary gardening manuals tend to use explanations of gardening based on purely scientific worldviews, while multi-sensory approaches to gardening are rare. This quantification of the encounter with the environment is criticised by some scholars in environmental ethics debates. They emphasise the importance of experiencing nature with all the senses and based on bodily experience for human well-being. In order to include gardening in this discussion, I present sequences from pre-modern writings on gardening. My guiding question is what feelings, associations, or changes of perspective inspired by ancient literature might enrich the contemporary gardening. Drawing on the phenomenologists Hermann Schmitz and his successor Gernot Böhme, I will analyse Roman texts by Vergil, Dioscorides and Pliny (all first century AD), among others. All of these texts contain descriptions of intense sensory experiences that correspond to the phenomenological philosophies of Schmitz and Böhme. They can therefore serve as a source of inspiration for contemporary garden experiences.