I write while I am in the garden. To write properly about a garden, one should not write while standing outside or just being near it, but in the garden.
It is not easy to have a beautiful garden; it is as difficult as ruling a kingdom. One must resolve to love even the imperfections, otherwise, one is deluded.
The time of the garden is therefore the time of life. It does not push us forward, like the mechanical time that governs our lives today, because a true place always roots us in the present time, here and now. There are no goals to achieve, no objectives to attain, for life has only one end: itself. The same is true for beauty, which constantly flows from the process of living.
To find this life, true life, and this time of nature which is also our true time, that which knows our animal body: this is what pushes us to open the door of a garden and to enter it, each time as if we were going to penetrate a world apart, buried within us.
Nature does not complete its work: it is chaotic. Man feels obliged to finish it, so he plants a garden and builds a wall around it.
The garden, a miniature image of creation, has confirmed that this is the only lasting, deep and fulfilling relationship possible.
One grows a garden so as not to feel alone. More often, it is the garden that cultivates us…..
The garden is a mirror of society and of the relationship with nature; it is at the same time a mythical space, where the collaboration between artist and architect is possible with more imagination and freedom.
In a garden, that which pulsates in the darkness – the dark, invisible force of roots and seeds – wants to surface. The task of the gardener is to care for this darkness and to transform it into light, colour, and form.
People are divided into those who build and those who plant. The builders finish their work and sooner or later are seized by boredom. Those who plant are subject to rain or storms, but the garden will never stop growing.
In building a garden, the form of its architecture must be well related to its function. In ancient times, the construction of each gazebo, each pavilion, each bend in a corridor was designed to meet very specific needs. Both repetition and extravagance must be avoided. The same applies to the art of writing poetry, where all redundancy must be abolished. The branches of knowledge are all, in one way or another, related to each other. The design flaws of a garden are similar to the lexical flaws of literature, since the purpose of the garden is to offer landscapes and that of literature to express ideas. This is why I say that building a small garden is as difficult as composing a poem of only four stanzas.
A garden also has its own identity. However, there are uncertain corners in which it is difficult to give birth to and grow what we want. Plants and flowers are like our plans: some do not grow, others grow when we least expect it.
…Anyone who wants to lead the world should first try to lead a garden…
I really liked this article and it immediately intrigued me since I had prepared one on the same idea of establishing a comparison with life.
I found yours very significant and profound and I congratulate you.