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Book Details
Gardening as a Sacred Art
Jeremy Naydler
| Price: |
£16.99 |
| Publication Date: |
20 Oct 2011 |
| Availability: |
Available to buy
|
This beautifully illustrated book presents a unique history of how people have worked with nature.
For the ancients, gardens served as the home of spiritual and divine beings. The idea that gardens were sacred places continued in the European Middle Ages.
Since the seventeenth century, however, nature has been seen more as a physical resource to be exploited. The change in gardening styles reflects this development, with the creation of grand garden terraces and landscapes, such as Versailles, which imposed human order and design on nature.
More recently gardening has become an art in its own right, enhancing nature's inherent beauty. Drawing on garden examples ranging from ancient Egypt to Monet's Giverny, Jeremy Naydler argues that gardening is best regarded as a sacred art, connecting human beings with nature and the earth in a truly spiritual way.
Reviews
'As a professional gardener himself and a scholar of symbolism and Geothe, Jeremy is ideally placed to write this book. The way we treat our gardens reflects our own attitude towards nature and the tension between feeling we belong to Nature but at the same time wanting to control it
This thoughtful book challenges the gardener in us to work as an artist and experience the sacred presence around us by being creatively engaged with the hidden formative forces of Nature.'
-- David Lorimer, Scientific Medical Network Review
'Gardening as a Sacred Art is an exceptionally well-referenced, delightfully illustrated and informative work. The message that the book conveys is that gardening, if done with due reverence for the Divine forces at work within the garden, can open a 'window to the spirit'. The task of the gardener, then, is to form 'a living bond with the garden's 'soul', whereupon the garden will once again become a sacred place in which to find healing,
peace and communion with the spirit.'
-- Rosemary Usselman, New View, Autumn 2011
'Jeremy Nadlers is a professional gardener as well as a doctor of theology and religious studies, but this is primarily a theological book. The fascinating conclusion is that a garden can act as an icon, a door through which we can glimpse the divine from our world
Dr Naydler explores the evolving relationship between the gardener-garden designer and nature. Our reverence for, versus dominance over, the wild landscape is the counterpoint along the journey
The theology stance does, though, add a richer dimension to that usually found in garden books
In this secular age, I welcome any book that, rather than looking at gardens as accessories, encouraged us to see them as places of communion in which to stop and listen.'
-- Jamie Cable, Church Times
About the Author(s)
Jeremy Naydler is a professional gardener. He has been inspired by Goethe's writings on the scientific method, and is the editor of Goethe on Science (1995). He holds a doctorate in theology and religious studies, and is also the author of Soul Gardening (2006), a volume of poetry, and The Future of the Ancient World: Essays on the History of Consciousness (2009).
