On the Necessity of Gardening traces the garden across centuries of human thought — from medieval paradise enclosed against the world to Anthropocene-era reckoning — using essays and an abecedarium to argue that how we garden is how we organise society.
About This Book
The garden has never been innocent. This book makes that case through art history, literature, and critical ecology, charting how artists, writers, poets, and thinkers have repeatedly returned to the garden not as retreat but as argument. In medieval imagery, the enclosed garden mirrored paradise — ordered, fertile, protected from worldly disorder. By the eighteenth century that symbolism had inverted: the garden became an instrument of political power and territorial ambition. Today, the Anthropocene demands a further reckoning with what we have made of nature and what nature is making of us. Structured around essays and an extensive abecedarium, this is a book for designers, cultural theorists, and anyone who reads landscape as a form of knowledge.
Key Features
- 240 pages of essays, abecedarium entries, and visual material tracing the garden as cultural and political metaphor
- Edited by Laurie Cluitmans
- Published by Valiz, ISBN: 9789493246003
What You'll Discover
- How the medieval hortus conclusus functioned as a theological proposition, not merely a decorative convention
- The shift in the eighteenth century that repositioned garden design as an expression of worldly power and political ideology
- The garden reconsidered under Anthropocene conditions — what it means to tend nature when the boundary between human and natural systems has collapsed
- An abecedarium structure that reads garden culture as a living lexicon, connecting disparate ideas across art, ecology, and social metaphor
About the Author
Laurie Cluitmans is the editor of this volume. [Details available upon request]
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 240
- Dimensions: 240 x 320 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9789493246003
- Publisher: Valiz
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Landscape architects, spatial designers, cultural theorists, and readers drawn to the intersection of ecology, art history, and political thought.