Gardens, aesthetics of

4. Appreciation

It was said at the outset that gardens give pleasure. In fact, the rewards of gardens are both multi-sensory and multi-modal. Gardens stimulate all our senses, not just that of sight; they also engage our other faculties. Each of these interactions can contribute to aesthetic pleasure, although they can also further non-aesthetic pursuits. In the garden, we see blooms, smell fragrances, feel breezes, hear birds and fountains, taste fruits. We savour the kinaesthetic sensations of moving in and through a space, imaginatively explore receding paths and distant vistas, zoom in to scrutinize particular plants and artefacts. Jay Appleton (1975) has proposed a theory of landscape appreciation according to which certain instincts come into play. Appleton believes that we prefer those landscapes that have survival value because of their possibilities for both prospect and refuge. That is, he believes we have an instinctual preference for landscapes that afford us vantage points from which others can be seen and hiding places in which we can escape from the gaze of others. Appleton also claims that the African savannah is the proto-typical landscape which provides such affordances!

Does Appleton’s theory explain the popularity of garden styles that most resemble the African savannah? The instincts Appleton posits seem more relevant to our primitive ancestors than to present-day garden viewers. Nonetheless, there are uses of the imagination which echo the roles Appleton sketches and which heighten our appreciation of gardens. In Ross (1998) the terms ‘invitation’ and ‘enclosure’ are used to flag the two sorts of appeals gardens make when they prompt us to imagine exploratory activities, varieties of play, heightened awareness and concentrated attention.

No catalogue of garden pleasures would be complete without mentioning intellectual pleasures. Gardens recruit understanding in many ways. We identify plants, classify architecture, ponder inscriptions, seek patterns and discern order. Allen Carlson (1979) argues that the appreciation of natural scenery requires the importation of scientific theories, because we must understand the forces that formed each landscape and the processes that sustain it. Certainly this can apply to gardens as well. For example, our appreciation of a rose garden might be enhanced by knowledge of hybridization, root grafting and genetic theory. But since gardens are also cultural artefacts, they carry further meaning we must unpack.