A Quote by David E. Cooper

How people make gardens is bound to reflect a way of experiencing the natural world, while at the same time this experience of nature is bound to reflect a culture - ways of painting nature, for example, or representing nature in literature, or of course making gardens.
As for the meaning of gardens, particular gardens may have, of course, all sorts of different meanings - emotive, historical, emblematic, religious, commemorative, and so on. But I think that good gardens all signify or exemplify an important truth about the relationship of culture and nature - their inseparability.
My whole interest in food grew from my interest in gardens and the question of how we engage with the natural world. To go back even further, I got interested in gardens because I was interested in nature and wilderness and Thoreau and Emerson.
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike. This natural beauty-hunger is made manifest in the little window-sill gardens of the poor, though perhaps only a geranium slip in a broken cup, as well as in the carefully tended rose and lily gardens of the rich, the thousands of spacious city parks and botanical gardens, and in our magnificent National parks โ€” the Yellowstone, Yosemite, Sequoia, etc. โ€” Nature's sublime wonderlands, the admiration and joy of the world.
I am always more interested in people than plants. Nature doesn't make gardens, people make gardens. And the story of a garden is always the story of a person.
That's exactly why nature always trumps gardens. Gardens are just reality pruned of chaos. What doesn't work you rip out.
I hate the idea of natural. For example, I prefer gardens to wild nature. I like to see the human touch. High heels are a complete invention - an extravagance. They're far from natural, but it's the impracticality that I adore. I prefer the useless to the useful, the sophisticated to the natural.
Nature consists of facts and of regularities, and is in itself neither moral nor immoral. It is we who impose our standards upon nature, and who in this way introduce morals into the natural world, in spite the fact that we are part of this world. We are products of nature, but nature has made us together with our power of altering the world, of foreseeing and of planning for the future, and of making far-reaching decisions for which we are morally responsible. Yet, responsibility, decisions, enter the world of nature only with us
Nature's patterns sometimes reflect two intertwined features: fundamental physical laws and environmental influences. It's nature's version of nature versus nurture.
Are we, finally, speaking of nature or culture when we speak of a rose (nature), that has been bred (culture) so that its blossoms (nature) make men imagine (culture) the sex of women (nature)? It may be this sort of confusion that we need more of.
Does the unmistakeable intent of Versailles to proclaim dominion over nature destroy its aesthetic appeal, as Schopenhauer thought? Does the greenness of the lawn lose its allure when we learn how much water, sorely needed elsewhere, it uses? And historical shifts in garden taste - from formal, 'French' gardens to 'Capability' Brown's landscapes, for instance, or from the elaborate gardens of imperial Kyoto to Zen 'dry' gardens - register important changes in philosophical or religious attitudes.
The conventional, and painfully artificial, separation of the human realm from the natural other is bound to perish, albeit over a period of time, until we are obliged to learn how to cultivate our gardens under the most demanding conditions.
The true essence of Chinese culture is sophistication, refinement, the spirit of poetry. The spirit of ink painting and calligraphy lives on forever. Calligraphy is more important than painting. Chinese always consider nature. Man is a very small part of nature. That's why in Chinese painting you see huge mountains and man very small, very humble before nature. You must be harmonious and one with nature. You don't fight it. And then there's a bit of a poetry. Of course, it's very complicated, but also very simple.
My favorite thing is landscaping. I love landscaping. And so what I'll do is, mostly I put language into search engines, and if I want to look, like, at tulip gardens, or, like, Georgian gardens, i love English gardens, how they're laid out. Japanese gardens, Asian gardens. So, I'm kind of a frustrated landscaper.
I have always gone to nature, since I was a kid. I was brought up in the woods, I did not have lots of friends, so I spent lot of time alone. My mother always loved to live in the forest; she loved gardens, birds and nature and taught me a deep respect for that. She taught me about growing food and vegetables and to take care of animals. They also have feelings. So nature was always something sacred for me, the place I can go, meditate and pray. It's like a church in the nature for me.
In our traditional culture, people have a very different view towards nature than in Western culture. We consider humans as part of nature. But in the West, they talk about protecting nature. That's a joke because nature doesn't care; it's humans who need to protect themselves.
As the Arabs say, "The nature of rain is the same, but it makes thorns grow in the marshes and flowers in the gardens.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!