Caleb Melchior
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​THE CURIOUS GARDENER: WEB JOURNAL

Bring Me Poetry, Bring Me Songs: Evolving Garden Ethics

8/4/2017

9 Comments

 
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I come from a family comfortable with teetering back and forth on the ledge of cognitive dissonance between faith and the scientific method. My father likes the consistent laws of physics. An egg couldn’t fall off the counter without becoming subject of an object lesson on calculating trajectories, velocity, and force upon impact. Same with chemistry. Us children would cry over spilt milk, not because it was wasted, but because we’d get drawn into endless practical calculations of temperature effects on evaporation and absorption rates of different household surfaces. After which we’d go into unironic discussions of Noah’s flood and apocalyptic Revelations.
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With such a pluralist upbringing, I’ve no patience for fundamentalism. Both in life and in gardens.
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Like making scrambled eggs in the household where I grew up, making a garden involves navigating systems of values that merge clearly-ordered physical systems with subjective aesthetic and psychological considerations. Thanks to the messy nature of human experience of physical reality, garden-making is a complex field of intention and interactions. In making a garden, people pay distinct attention to a specific place and its component parts, manipulating it to enhance specific aesthetic and functional qualities. Involvement with a garden is basically a smaller, more concentrated version of our personal approaches to presence in the wider universe. Which puts us squarely in ethics territory.
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Merriam-Webster defines the term “ethic” as “a set of moral principles; the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group professional ethics; a guiding philosophy.” So, a garden ethic involves a set of principles or values that determine how we make decisions in garden-making. Each of us has a garden (or landscape) ethic - usually a grubby mental treasure map compiled from received wisdom and personal experience. Many of us just don’t know how to articulate or clearly lay out these values and the ways that they influence our decision-making process in gardening and garden design.
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I always struggled with the idea of a “concept” in design school. It took me ages to figure out that this concept business wasn’t necessarily some big explicit narrative. Not until my full entire semester seminar dedicated to The Theory of Landscape Architecture did I realize that a “concept” is just the primary premise of a garden. Why are you making this garden? What’s your intention for its function? What values are driving your choices?
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To some degree, all gardens are “conceptual”. They all have some idea underlying them. Even a whiskey barrel stuffed with seed-grown 6-pack petunias has the basic intention of providing bright flower color in a bleak environment. On ThinkinGardens, Jay Sifford writes about designing a garden with the concept of enhancing light effects in his beech wood by blocking in masses of light- and dark-foliaged plants.  Continuing the conversation, Charlie Bloom wrote about her Colourbox No-Concept Garden - which takes a similar approach to Jay’s garden, in focusing on aesthetic effects rather than an explicit narrative. Some conceptual gardens - such as those you’ll see at the Chaumont-sur-Loire, Hampton Court, or Cornerstone Sonoma - will be more explicit or literal in their concepts. The intention for the weirder of these gardens is to push new materials or explore what a garden can do. However, in wider conversations about gardens and garden design, I’d argue that the way forward is to create a more sophisticated and nuanced conversation around garden ethics.
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Outside academia and a few garden shows, our industry hasn’t been great about articulating the ethics of garden-making. Usually, a garden is presented as fulfilling one of three primary functions: edible, ecological, or ornamental. Edible gardens prioritize providing for human physical needs. Ecological gardens are typically focused on needs of other species, replicating wild plant combinations and providing habitat. Ornamental gardens are primarily for human aesthetic enjoyment - lots of large brightly colored flowers. These three intentions to a garden are often presented as antagonistic - or even mutually exclusive.
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However, to me, there’s not much value in taking an “either/or” approach to garden ethics. Just as it’s possible to hold both an understanding of scientific research methods and fantastical historical allegories, so it’s possible to take a pluralistic approach to accumulating a garden ethic. I don’t just want essays, white papers, & research reports. Bring me poetry, allegories, narratives and songs - then we’ll be well on the way to developing a richer, more sophisticated garden ethic.
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9 Comments
Ethne Clarke
9/3/2017 01:39:29 pm

Exactly, Caleb. Brilliant essay.

Reply
Caleb Melchior
9/4/2017 07:28:08 pm

Thank you, Ethne - I really appreciate your kind words. Watch this space for more ideas along this line of thought.

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12/29/2017 10:26:35 pm

Gardens make me feel peaceful. I remember how happy I used to be whenever I would visit my grandmother's house back in the days. She has this beautiful garden in her backyard full of wonderful and colorful flowers. Whenever we got to her house, I would always ask if I could stay the night just so I can stay in the garden for a longer time. She passed away a few years ago and I miss her so much, but it really helps me whenever I see gardens because I remember how much she loved them.

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5/19/2019 07:50:10 pm

We also have our own garden, and that is my favorite place in our house. When we were still kids, we used to play a lot there. We do not mind stumbling down because the place is covered with grass and other plants. We were also having our tea time there with our parents and just talk about our life in the future. I remember when my mom got mad because I picked some of her favorite white roses. Little did she know, I was actually planning to give it to her as a mother's day gift. You see, my family and I have created a lot of memories in our garden.

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    Caleb
    Melchior

    Plant Geek | Observer
    Writer | Designer
    Landscape Poet

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