The Art of Gardens: An Introduction

ABSTRACT This volume argues that looking at gardens through the lens of art and aesthetics generates new insights into the role that gardens have for those who make and depend on them. Drawing on some of the debates around the anthropology of art, we suggest that aesthetics provides a rich analytical perspective on the importance of gardens to many wider aspects of social life. We argue for the critical conceptual significance of gardens in Melanesia, and in Amazonia. In doing so, we foreground the importance of diversity in gardening: in plants and knowledge practices, and in the recognition of non-human beings and their collaboration with gardeners. This is, in part, a factor of the satisfactions that people find in growing beautiful and diverse gardens that link to myth, to history and to place. This introduction sets out these arguments and also provides a summary of each of the papers presented in the volume.