We Must Cultivate our Gardens: ‘Aging Well’ a la Voltaire

This is final part (Part III) of the series -
Caring to cultivate on the long row of life: 
An eclectic look at gardens, gardening, and the aging process
{Part I and II are in previous postings} 
This is an open source scholarship posting; you are welcome to use for you own educational interests and experience. A citation back to this blog site is appreciated.
Thanks, Scott D. Wright, Ph.D. 

UPDATED: March 21, 2009 – - – - from NY Times, March 20, 2009 Reporter: Marian Burros

Obamas to Plant Vegetable Garden at White House 

  

 

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We Must Cultivate our Gardens

In George Valliant’s (2002) monumental study of aging and well-being, Aging Well, there were many highlighted suggestions that could serve as helpful “guideposts” (lifestyle choices) toward a healthier and more fulfilling process of adult development. And in summarizing his book, Valliant ended with a chapter titled, “Positive Aging: A Reprise,” and in that section there was the creative metaphor that captured the nuances of growing older as akin to gardening – or more precisely – the lessons learned in being a gardener could serve as a positive role model for finding fulfillment in later life.

Among the many positive attributes, Valliant proposed that gardening is an activity that encourages a therapeutic slowness (see also Goldman, 2005; Goldman & Mahler, 2000) and brings with it the additional benefit of creating opportunities for introspection and reflection (that you should you stop and smell the roses) and that it encourages and facilitates the overarching Eriksonian concept of care: a hallmark and defining positive attribute of the aging process. We are reminded of Shakespeare’s lament, “sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste” which all but exudes the wisdom of living a long and cultivating the rewards of a life well-lived – and cared for. Valliant also proclaimed that gardeners are very much in the spirit of generativity and symbolically working (that is, being concerned and having responsibility for) the soil is embedded with the meaning of rebirth and re-generation, stewardship and the essence of cultivating for the next cycle of life. And with this kind of care, there is the potential for the legacy of caritas, a vita activa, and a vocation of care transmitted through the generations. Thus, as Valliant succinctly states it, “There is a kind of immortality about gardens, at least until next spring – and the spring after that” (p. 309).

Not only does Valliant make reference to Cicero and the ancient Roman tradition of viniculture as an honorable activity for aging, he revisits the famous line from Voltaire’s Candide ¹⁴, where after many journeys, hardships and mishaps, and a great deal of theorizing, Candide instructs Pangloss, “We should cultivate our gardens.” That pithy philosophical statement was crafted by Candide and inspired from an earlier encounter with an old man who was sitting outside his house “minding his own business” and taking in the day and enjoying the “fruits of his labor.” This encounter sounds very familiar to a similar story of the old man previously mentioned in Virgil’s Georgics. In Voltaire’s novel, the old man knew little of worldly affairs and events, but graciously offered Candide, Pangloss and Martin a sumptuous meal of exotic fruits and nuts that were grown on his farm. Candide assumed the old man must have some vast and magnificent estate, but the old man said, “I have only twenty acres and I cultivate them with my children; and my work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice and need.”

It took awhile, but Candide had suddenly become a fast learner. Gardening? Yes, of course. Candide thought it to be a far better existence than compared to anything else they had encountered as history unfolded not too kindly in all of their travels and experiences. And so be it. We should cultivate our gardens, but what is it exactly about gardens and gardening that would supply meaningful significance to the life course, and particularly to the aging process? What is the connection between gardening and care and well-being? There is much to discuss with this intersection, but one link to appreciate is the connection back to Valliant’s synthesis of his research findings that point to gardening as more than activity, rather it takes on the gravity of an a philosophy of life, a Weltanschauung, a raison d’être – and much more. Valliant indicated that instead of the all-elusive high expectations of happiness to be sought for in later life, the concept that might instead be a better fit given the realism of the aging process in terms of challenges and promise is a joy in life. Wendell Berry (1972), noted scholar and farmer helps to build the bridge the connection between the land, the person, and the psychological benefits in this way,

The redeeming aspect of the sense of involvement and responsibility is that it does not stand alone, but is only part of the process, a way of life that includes joy. Not always or necessarily or even the dramatic joy of surprise – though that is one of it’s possibilities – but the quiet persistent joy of familiarity (p. 42).

The experience of a joyful attention to life (and a life) that is cultivated in gardening is very much akin to a meditative practice (Johnson, 2008) and helps to create a new kind of “homecoming” that allows one to become native to a place where a deeper connection to seasons of growth – and decline (Jackson, 1994).  To many, the garden exemplifies a new agrarian standard (Berry, 2003) that integrates the many realms of the “Great Garden” that is a seamless gateway between many realms of nature including trees, streams, pastures and it helps to instill a redirecting of mindful care (see Logsdon, 1994).

Before you might think that the topic of gardening is exclusively an opportunity for those who are geographically located in rural areas or along the exurban fringes, and thus beyond the reach for urban and inner city dwellers, consider the following example.

In the low-income residential neighborhood geographically located in the Bronx (New York) known as Tremont, there exists a community garden that recently celebrated its 37^th anniversary. And it is here that the residents of Tremont find a sense of belonging even while surrounded in a world of concrete. Tina Kelley wrote a story for the New York Times (August 30, 2008) on the Tremont Community garden and said that the, “gardens are oases, where a collective spirit and a sense of community grow from the topsoil.” The President of the community garden is Elizabeth Butler (age 77) and she said that the garden is like a refuge, “If I couldn’t come here, it would be rough…I can’t stay in the house.” Another garden member, a retired nurse, said the garden is site for celebrating birthdays and as a place for memorial services as well. “They were like deeply part of the garden, like a soul thing,” while another community member said of the garden, “It’s my joie de vivre. I like the way it looks. I enjoy the view. I sit here by myself.”

Joie de vivre. Joy in life.

And then there is Candide: Il faut cultiver notre jardin. Yes, we should cultivate our gardens. But listen to how Harrison (2008) has interpreted notre jardin from Voltaire’s story,

Notre jardin is never a garden of merely private concerns into which one escapes from the real; it is that plot of soil on the earth, within the self, or amid the social collective, where the cultural, ethical, and civic virtues that save reality from its own worst impulses are cultivated. Those virtues are always ours (p. x).

It may be difficult to imagine this much ado about a patch of soil, some seeds, watering, and having a “strong back and a weak mind” with all the weeding and mulching (see Stout, 1974). But Voltaire was onto something. And that “something” has resonated with many older adults throughout history and is today still both a viable and contemplative activity that is both elemental and transcendental. That “something,” is related to the core virtue of the mature and responsible adult in mid and later life: the ethical basis of care (Hoare, 2002; Kotre, 1996).

To be generative – to cultivate – to care – is both utilitarian and sacred and finds its joyful expression in the reverential duty in the garden.

Thanks – and best of luck with your cultivation, care, and gardening
Scott D. Wright, Ph.D. 

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Endnotes

1.              This is also a special thematic issue of Activities, Adaptation & Aging Activities, Adaptation & Aging, 22, 1997, edited by Suzanne E. Wells. See also Activities, Adaptation & Aging, Volume 22, Number 3 (1997), Horticultural Therapy and the Older Adult Population, Part II.

2.              The Eden Alternative web site: http://www.edenalt.org

3.              For example, many “weekend gardeners” with an interest in sustainable gardening are turning to perennial meadows as an environmentally friendly alternative. The rewards take time as the wildflowers take time to mature and proper over several years (Garmey, 2008). (See Shakespeare’s line from Richard III, “Because sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste.”

4.              Michael Pollan’s chapter in “Keeping Eden” (1992) also appears in the magazine Orion (Winter 1993, pp. 27-31.

5.              “You reap what you sow,” from Paul’s letter to the Galatians – 6:7; but see also Van Gogh’s paintings, “The Sower” and “Sower with Setting Sun.”

6.              I am referencing from two publications, Thoreau, H.D. (2004). Walden (foreword by Terry Tempest Williams), Shambhala: Boston which is the one hundred fiftieth edition; and Thoreau, H.D. (1995). Walden (annotated edition and edited by Walter Harding), Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston.

7.              For an interesting critique of the portrayal of gardening in movies, see Constance Casey’s posting “Gilding the lily; What movies get wrong (and right) about gardening.” in Slate, Friday, December 28, 2007.

8.              In Horton Foote’s (1954), The Trip to Bountiful” Play in Three Acts, Mrs. Carrie Watts said, “I gotta get back and smell the salt air and work that dirt. I’m gonna spend my whole first month of my visit working Callie’s garden. I haven’t had my hands in dirt in twenty year. My hands feel the need for dirt. Do you like to work the ground?” Published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.

9.               In addition to the main appearance of the strawberry patch in the script, it is interesting that Bergman (1960) uses another “strawberry” reference in relation to describing the very pregnant Eva, wife of Akerman, who wished to reconnect with Borg, and even suggested he could become godfather to the new baby.

10.           The Garden of Earthy Delights has inspired the cover art for several books such as Terry Tempest Williams’s book (2000) Leap, cover of Dead Can Dance, from the album Aion (see song The Garden Of Zephirus); the novel Mating by Norman Rush (1992), in fact many of the covers of Rush’s novels). Carl Jung referred to Hieronymus Bosch as the, “The master of the monstrous… the discoverer of the unconscious.” The Garden of Earthly Delights is also used on the front cover of Thomas Freidman’s recently released book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution – and How It can Renew America (2008) which raises some degree of intrigue: on one hand the painting could symbolically connote some utopic ecological ideal; on the other hand, the notion that a Bosch painting saturated with Medieval Christian doctrine could capture contemporary concepts of “sustainability” and “stewardship” and “energy-net zero” is provocative.

11.           c. 1558; Oil on canvas, mounted on wood, 73.5 x 112 cm; Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels. Compare and contrast the portrayal of the imagery capturing the fall of Icarus in the following paintings: The Lament For Icarus by Herbert Draper, exhibited 1898, Oil on canvas 1829 x 1556 mm, Tate Gallery, London; Icarus and Daedalus by Charles Paul Landon. Imagery of Icarus falling is also found on the doors that enter into National Academy of Science building and is used by the poet W. H. Auden and “Musee des Beaux Arts” (1938), and to the more recent, the poet William Carlos Williams’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” (1962).

12.           For a virtual visit of Monet’s Garden at Giverny, go to http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/visual_culture/projects/diva/giverny.html.

13.           For more information about other exhibitions of Monet’s work, see article by Alan Riding, published June 1, 1999, Arts abroad: Monet’s endless valedictory of light and water lilies, in New York Times. Riding notes several pertinent statements relevant to this article where Monet was quoted, ”I am absorbed in my work. These landscapes of water and reflections have become an obsession for me. It is beyond my strength as an old man, and yet I so want to render what I feel.” In addition Riding observed, that with the water-lily series, “Monet seems suddenly liberated. Having long insisted that he was an artist who painted what he saw; now spending more time in his studio he began painting as much from memory. In the summer months he would again work in his gardens. But the outdoor easel paintings of the final decade of his life also show a dramatic change in his style, toward what we now call abstraction: his beloved bridge, for instance, is barely recognizable amid a storm of brush strokes in autumnal colors.”

14.           I am referencing from the book by Jean Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire, Candide and the 1929 edition published by The Literary Guild, New York. (Copyright, 1929 Random House Inc.) with illustrations by Rockwell Kent.

15.           In relation to the issues of gardening and awareness of the importance of soil quality for future generations, see National Geographic magazine article, “Our Good Earth” (September, 2008), where the subtitle captures the concept, “The future rests on the soil beneath our feet.” Another succinct comment in the article was offered by a geologist who said, “…we’re going to have to start getting interested in soil…We’re simply not going to be able to keep treating it like dirt.” (p. 106).

16.           This book has been republished in 1992 although copies may be hard to find in bookstores. Several online vendors in the United Kingdom offer copies at various prices. For an interesting perspective on the significance of this classic publication by Arthur Hellyer see article by Robin Lane Fox in Financial Times, “Financial fruit-rot,” Oct.18/19, 2008, p. 1.

17.           See also Ralph Blumenthal (2008, August 31), Out Back, an Urban Oasis, The New York Times, p. 24.

18.           Camille Paglia (2005) has offered several interesting insights into the garden metaphor found within Hamlet, viz.,  “The well-managed garden, a major metaphor in Hamlet, is a paradigm of the wisely governed state.” (p. 15). 

Caring to cultivate on the long row of life: An eclectic look at gardens, gardening, and the aging process (Part II)

Part II of the series:

Caring to cultivate on the long row of life: An eclectic look at gardens, gardening, and the aging process 

In the spirit of Rogue Scholarship on Aging- this is an open source research paper for your learning and enrichment. You are welcome to cite and integrate into your own learning experience – but in return, all I ask is a reference back to this web site along with title and author (http://uofugeron.wordpress.com)
thanks – Scott D. Wright, Ph.D.

Title: Caring to cultivate on the long row of life: An eclectic look at gardens, gardening, and the aging process
Author: Scott D. Wright, Ph.D.
Affiliation: Director and Associate Professor, Gerontology Interdisciplinary Program, University of Utah, 84112.

Gardens, Aging, and Film

Although Jung’s use of the rhizome metaphor supports the philosophical impression of life as continuous and unending, despite the relentless seasons and centuries of time, gardens are very much transitory and impermanent. And so while gardens can be perceived as being artistic (Albers, 1991), they may not necessarily represent the outcome that matches the Hippocratic dictum, “Life is short, art is long” (Ars longa, vita brevis) in the sense that the garden is cultivated and cared for in an effort to outlast its caretaker. For example, Harrison points out that,

Gardens are not memorials. They may, as long as they last, be places of memories or sites of recollection, but apart from a few lofty exceptions they do not exists to immortalize their makers or defy the ravages of time. If anything they exist to reenchant the present (p. 39).

Yet, one long-lasting medium for the expression of art is through the vehicle of film. And it is here that we will examine the crossroads of the use of garden imagery (symbolic and realistic) in relation to the aging process. In the growing array of films (see Yahnke, 2003) with the primary characters as older adults or aging themes ⁷ (e.g., On Golden Pond, Cocoon, The Trip to Bountiful ⁸, Driving Miss Daisy, About Schmidt, Strangers in Good Company, Foxfire, Iris, Away From Her), I will focus on three in particular that will capture the topic in this section: Wild Strawberries, Dreams, and Grey Gardens.

Wild Strawberries is the 1957 film by Ingmar Bergman which depicts the story of Dr. Isak Borg (played by the veteran Swedish director Victor Sjöström who was die soon after the filming and was paid tribute by Ingmar Bergman at the Swedish Film Academy in 1960; see Bergman, 1960) who is traveling in his car to receive an honorary degree. But at the start of the day and along the way, Borg is subject through several flashbacks and fantasies, dreams and nightmares. The symbolism is rich and heavy as Borg is forced to face his past, come to terms with his faults, and accept the inevitability of his own mortality. Erik Erikson (1978) has provided a comprehensive analysis, based on his own theoretical interpretation, of Bergman’s film and offered interesting insights into the personality of Dr. Borg and interpersonal dynamics with his daughter-in-law Marianne and host of other characters in the film. It is here that Erikson sees the emergent virtue of care as a necessary strength for “the life cycle as well as the cycle of generations” (p. 7).

For example, Erikson (1978) noted that the tensions found between Dr. Borg and Marianne and Borg’s son Evald reflect the core issues of generativity such that it is Borg who must confront his own rejectivity and the resulting lack of care and interest in his own family and many others around him (see also Weiland, 1993). The turning point for Isak Borg, and obviously the primary inspiration for the title of film, is when Dr. Borg leaves the main highway (his journey of life) and drives down a side road to revisit an old summer home (a chance for reminiscence and remembrance out of the rigid pattern of living in rote predictability).  As he walks closer and Marianne leaves to go swimming in the sea, Borg remembers a specific location that would serve as catalyst for a reawakening much like the Proustian Madeleine, but in this case, it is strawberry patch near the summer home (Archer, 1959).  And it is here that we find a richly layered symbolism that involves the magical transformation of the landscape surrounding the home into blooming plants and trees, and lush greenery. Even though the film is in black and white, one can almost imagine that large yard as colorful as Monet’s gardens at Giverny. The wild strawberries that grow along the side of the yard are the triggering mechanism to transports Borg back through time and allow him to revisit his own young adulthood in relation to Sara, his “first love.” In this film, the bounty of the earth in the form of wild strawberries is richly symbolic of the decisions made and the missed opportunities at forming intimate relationships (with Sara) and the resulting isolation and aloofness that made him think of himself as a “living corpse.”

Erikson (1978) offers his analysis of the Arcadian scene,

…one senses that this whole earthy scene, beyond its precious gaiety and its symbolic reference to defloration, points to something primeval, some garden, long forfeited by Isak (p. 8).

It is also intriguing that strawberries are prominent in the landscape of the painting by Hieronymus Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, which perhaps symbolizes the domains of temptations and earthly pleasures. We shall present more on that painting in the next section. But the revisiting of the patch of wild strawberries helps to break down the walls of Borg’s enclosed garden of generational isolation, and he then begins to revel in the possibility of love and caring – and sharing beyond himself. Later on in the film, Borg is presented with the gift of flowers by his young travelers who wish to celebrate in his celebration event in his honor at the university, he has achieved an understanding of how he needs to be fully engaged with life and begin to fulfill the need to facilitate a “maintenance of the world.” At least from Erikson’s perspective, that small patch of botanical life, the wild strawberries ⁹, are at once symbolic of the epigenetic pathway and a crossroads through adulthood and into the commitments of mature caring within mid and later life.

With the title of Grey Gardens, such a film would appear to be the perfect connecting point for examining aging issues (grey) and gardens. But the film is less about gardening in the later years (per se) and more about of what was once cared for in relationships with people, home, and landscape in the past – has instead fallen into a state of neglect due to the disconnect with cultivating what is alive (not counting the cats and raccoons) in the present. Grey Gardens is the 1976 film by Albert and David Maysles and it is a portrait of two aging women (mother and daughter) both frozen in time and place, in an East Hampton home that is graying along with them. Grey Gardens is actually the name of the decaying estate that belongs to Edith Bouvier Beale (“Big Edie”) age 79 and her daughter Edie (or “Little Edie”) in her fifties. In the early 1970s, their 28-room mansion was found to be health hazard and both were threatened with eviction. They are relatives of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis and it was she who intervened on their behalf so that could both stay in the mansion after a massive clean up. Both Big and Little Edie live in the past as they travel back through the decades via photo albums, vinyl records, and scrapbooks. The film opens up with Little Edie telling the Maysles about what used to be in terms of the beautiful and exotic gardens that once was. But as the camera sweeps the landscape it is obvious all has “gone wild” with thick overgrowth, vines that threaten to cover the house, and thick trees that literally create a wall of seclusion around the home.

Throughout the film, there are shots of the house surrounded by thickets of vegetation that make it appear deserted and forlorn. And during the winter months, it carries the haunting images of a Hollywood set piece where the Grey Gardens mansion is enveloped in an ivy-snarled ruin. It brings to mind Alan Weisman’s (2007) provocative scenario of envisioning “The World Without Us” where instead of the encroaching ivy that we observe in the film, Weisman speculates on the role of kudzu (the infamous weed of the South),

…without gardeners endlessly trying to uproot the ravenous stuff, long before the vacant houses and skyscrapers of Southern cities tumble, they may have already vanished under a bright, waxy green, photosynthesizing blanket” (p. 274).

In Grey Gardens there actually is a man who is introduced as the “gardener” at the beginning of the film, but it is clear that the intruding jungle of vegetation is overwhelming to him. As the mother and daughter engage in their own private world of isolation and disconnect, the botanical world encroaches. As they live in the past, the present landscape is removed from their care and attention. While they may have their memories of some glorious yesteryear, the future is left to random seclusion. Harrison succinctly states the connection between the need for constant gardening in the face of our obligations to the here and now,

If we are not able to keep our garden, if we are not able to take care of our mortal world, heaven and salvation are vain (p. 11). 

And it is with this insight do we then fully appreciate the lines from Shakespeare’s Hamlet whereby the Prince sees the troubled world all around him as “an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; Things rank and gross in nature, Possess it merely” (I, ii.135-136) (see Paglia, 2005).

            Akira Kurosawa, at the age of 80, directed and then released the film, Dreams in 1990 (his 28^th film), which portrayed several dreams based on Kurosawa’s own over the course of his life.  It is a “visually stunning” film and consists of eight segments that are arranged in temporal/spatial progression and filled with cultural references within classical Japanese culture (Serper, 2001; Reider, 2005). The first and last episodes of Dreams feature two processions that symbolize the opening and closing of the life cycle: a wedding (usually leading to a new birth) and a funeral (Serper, 2001). The film also captures luminous sequences of botanical wonderment with fields of flowers (Sunshine Through the Rain), an orchard of peaches in full bloom (The Peach Orchard) and rural scenes of wheat fields (Crows) with Van Gogh (who also loved gardens; see Fell, 2001) at work painting his landscapes and antithetical segments that portrayed the ruins of ecological disasters and the break with nature.  It is however, the last segment, “The Village of the Watermills,” that will serve as the focal point of this discussion.

            The setting for The Village of the Watermills is a lush farm with blooming flowers, lush green grass, and crystal clear rivers that drive the watermills in a wheel-like fashion. It is a “paradisiacal place: a village where modern technology has not invaded people’s lives and they live in harmony with nature” (Redier, 2005; p. 265). The Kurosawa surrogate (the younger man), while walking through the village, encounters a 103-year old man, who is working on a smaller water wheel structure. The older man communicates the necessity of treating the land with respect and articulates the perils if it is mistreated. The symbolic depth of the old man imparting wisdom to the younger man is a critical link in the message of the segment which highlights that working in harmony with the land helps to create a natural cycle of living – and dying.

Thus, even the funeral of a 99-year old woman (the old man’s first love) is treated with dignity and a celebration of music, flowers, and processional dancing. The entire village is involved in the funeral: children, adults, and the elderly, male and female. The watermills turn with the river of water, which provides nourishment for the plants and the flowers, which in turn the villagers use to celebrate the wheel of life – and death. After watching this segment, there is the renewed sense of appreciation for the purpose of flowers at the gravesite and at memorial services, as we remind ourselves of the blossom that does pass, but the rhizome remains.

At the end of the segment in the film, we are left watching a slow moving river current with undulating clusters of long swirling stands of lush aquatic plants flowing, swaying with the flow of water that reflects multiple colors reflected from the surface – blues, greens, and the liquid silver of indirect sunlight. Much like an oil painting of Monet – Water Lilies – and his Japanese Bridge over his pond.

Gardens, Aging, and Painting

The interrelationship between painting and the use of garden as motif or actual object for inspiration represents an important, intense and intimate thread in the history of art. There is perhaps the most spectacular and enigmatic work of Hieronymus Bosch and his haunting imagery associated with the triptych, Garden of Earthly Delights. The Garden of Earthly Delights was painted around the years 1503 and 1504 when Bosch was about 50 years of age (Belting, 2002), although he lived well into the mid-sixties of life. Garden of Earthly Delights ¹⁰ is the middle panel (also known as Imaginary Paradise) of the triptych and captures sinful pleasures in a garden-like setting where naked figures parade about and into pools of water which can bring to mind primeval fountains of youth. Compared to the panel “Paradise” which depicts a more balanced ecosystem of sorts, the middle panel is awash in people, and the garden appears to be magically self-sustaining with little human activity involved in maintenance or cultivating its rich resources for all. And indeed, there are no children to be found in this Arcadian landscape and everyone appears to be ageless. This is a presentation of a carefree world where the garden serves as a symbolic Utopia and humankind resides paradise untouched by the “Fall” (Belting, 2002). Of course, it is the other panel, Hell, which exacts the most hallucinatory experience and presentation of nightmarish figures. Perhaps, we can think of that desperate landscape as a karmic reminder of where there are repercussions for engaging care-less activities that didn’t take into account the stewardship clause when residing in the Garden of Eden. We reap what we sow, but in this case the “Fall” may represent when all was spent in the present and little effort was taken to cultivate for the next season – or the next generation – thus leading to the hellish demise of humanity.

Another work of art relating to the cultivating theme and gardening is attributed to Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus ¹¹. The Fall of Icarus captures the moment of when Icarus flies too close to the sun (after warned not to do so by his father Deadalus) and because his wings are made of wax, he his sent downward and crashes into the sea. What is odd in Bruegel’s painting of the mythological figure of Icarus is that one is actually hard pressed to find him in the painting (his legs are barely noticeable just below the ship on the right side of the painting).  Instead, it appears the most prominent theme in the painting is the day-to-day activities of working people in the countryside who go about their business of taking care of their appointed responsibilities. Ships have places to go, the herdsman has to watch over the sheep, someone has to catch the fish, and in the foreground is the farmer cultivating the soil by plowing the field. While the great mythological figures go about their business in their world, Brueghel appears to put things into perspective that the day-to-day activities such as cultivating the garden is the greater act in the world as it is what matters most in our world. There is life and there is death and in between there is the caring for those still with us. H. Arthur Klein and Mina C. Klein noted in their book, Peter Bruegel: Artist of Abundance, that there was a head of corpse of an old man (barely visible) just beyond the plowed furrows in the painting. This could possibly be another layer of meaning within the painting that relates to an old Flemish saying, “No plow stands still just because a man dies.”

            Vincent Van Gogh loved his gardens and incorporated the flowers of the countryside into his paintings (Fell, 2001) as did Cezanne and Renoir. And it has been said that Gustav Kilmt’s garden was his refuge and help to inspire his flower paintings: “it was his wellspring from which he drew strength for all his work,” (Neret, 2001; p.51), but the primary exemplar for the intersect of painting, gardens and aging would be Claude Monet.

            Claude Monet, who is considered as one of the founders of style of painting known as French Impressionism, lived a remarkable eighty-six years of life that spanned across two centuries (from 1840 to 1926).  Monet shared a remarkable artistic journey with many others in the same historical time frame such as Manet, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, Rodin, Cezanne, and Degas, all of which left the world with sublime expressions of beauty and reverence. Monet, in particular, proved to be extremely productive with creating some of his most famous paintings into his later years and along with other many other painters (e.g., Henri Matisse, Rembrandt, Georgia O’Keefe) he has been the subject of research examining later-life creative and artistic style and productivity into the second half of life (Cohen, 2001; Kauppinen & Mckee, 1988; Lindauer, 2003; Ravin and Kenyon, 1998; Rosand, 1987).  But the intersect of painting and aging is not the focus of this paper; rather and instead, what is of direct relevance is the source of inspiration for Monet’s creative expression in the second half of his life from the year 1883 and during the next forty-three years until his death in 1926.

            Many people are certainly aware of the vast array of Monet’s work and many can also readily identify the unique style and composition of his paintings, such that, for example, when examining water lilies with rich textures or admiring irises with saturated colors, we come to think that those flowering plants are virtually synonymous with his portfolio of art. But then again many people may not know that those paintings were created based on the living landscape of his own home and garden located in Giverny, France. ¹² Monet was both painter and gardener and he spent the last 43 years of his long life with his close-knit family by cultivating his passion for creating color with flowering plants on a one hectare (2.5 acre) garden site and then capturing the dynamic and fluid presence of those plants onto his canvas with brushwork and oils (Howell, 2003). There is an obvious intimacy and interdependency, some might say an obsession, between Monet and his garden, which also served a muse to his motivation and desire in capturing the vagaries of light and color across his cultivated landscape. But his garden would also be a healing and therapeutic oasis that helped help him cope and adjust to the loss of his second wife who died in 1910 and when he lost his son Jean in February 1914.  In addition to his large-scale formal French terrestrial garden filled with lilacs, tulips, geraniums, hollyhocks, poppies, nasturtiums, clematis, sweet peas, and various shrubs and trees, Monet also created and developed an exotic water garden complete with an authentic Japanese Bridge covered in climbing roses and wisteria which spanned the pond that was filled with hyacinths and water lilies and at the edge were abundant irises and graceful willows. Monet was reported as saying, “My most important work of art is my garden” (Denvir, 1991). From 1908 and at the age of 68, Monet focused his artistic work almost entirely on depicting his garden, and was then commissioned by the state to create a remarkable large format series (on panels more than 6 feet high and 9 feet wide) of paintings of water-lilies (Grandes Decorations) his tour de force, that formed an enveloping circle that was to reside in a specially constructed pavilion in the Musée de l Orangerie, which was an extension to the Louvre (Denvir, 1991; Southgate, 2001)¹³. After 1912 and at the age of 74 Monet only painted summer subjects in his garden and during the winter months his worked in his studios retouching his works and finishing his canvases (Howell, 2003), but he was then diagnosed with a cataract in his right eye, and eventually would come to affect both eyes. And yet despite his visual impairments, Monet proclaimed in 1920, “I’m extremely busy with my garden; it’s such a joy to me, and on fine days like those we’ve had recently I am in raptures at the wonders of nature.”

            Monet continued to paint but his deteriroating eyesight caused him severe problems in distinguished colors for many of his final years (Howell, 2003). For example, Howell (2003) noted that the painting, The Japanese Bridge, challenges the viewer with its intense, angry colours and bold use of texture” (p. 174) and many speculated that Monet was transitioning into more of an abstract style of painting as evidenced by yet another uncharacteristic painting style as found in, The House Seen from the Rose Garden, which appears to be vague and distorted compared to earlier paintings. While there have been many theoretical arguments about whether the change in Monet’s paintings of his garden was due to “late style” or specifically due to limitations in his vision, Marmor (2006) used medical knowledge and computer simulation to investigate the impact of visual disabilities on their perceptions. Marmor (2006) demonstrated how Monet (and the painter Degas) had their perceptions of their preferred scenes or subjects changed due to disease and then affected their style of painting (Bakalar, 2007; Dotinga, 2007; Werner, 2008). And for Monet, the loss of color perception due to his complications with cataracts was a major problem (see Ravin, 1968; Ravin & Kenyon, 1998; Werner, 1998). As Marmor (2006) pointed out, Monet used his beloved garden landscape to capture the nuances of color and light, “but his cataracts severely changes and challenged the marvelous qualities of color in his works” (p. 1769). Even though different eye pathologies cause different visual limitations, we now know how low vision can affect the ability affect both the physical and mental well-being of older adults and the ability to function in a variety of ADLS and IADLS (Berger & Porell, 2008; O’Donnell, 2005). Despite these challenges, Monet stayed connected with the enchantment of his garden space and his paintings, especially of the water lilies, were his sense of legacy to the world, that to care and cultivate the beautiful is embrace a larger cosmic sense of nature and that he was able to engage this belief while still facing physical limitations and obstacles. His heroic work on the Grandes Decorations (e.g., Water Lilies: Morning with Willows) in the final years is a testament to his dedication to his craft and his desire to capture on canvas the momentary beauty of flowers, the shifting presence of water, and the ethereal space that contains it all (Howell, 2003). His dedication to bontanic beauty found among the water lilies would even find its way into Proust’s great work, In Search of Lost Time (see Karpeles, 2008). In the end, the gardener and the artist merged into a portrait of how the later years of life can find fulfillment and purpose in the organic, flowered, and verdant landscape that was cultivated by hand perceived by the masterstrokes of the mature Monet that were to be enjoyed for generations to come.

Part III will be posted next week – along with all the references -
thanks, Scott D. Wright

Caring to cultivate on the long row of life: An eclectic look at gardens, gardening, and the aging process

This is Part I of a three-part series relating to the topic of gardens, gardening, and the aging process. In the spirit of Rogue Scholarship on Aging- this is an open source research paper for your learning and enrichment. You are welcome to cite and integrate into your own learning experience – but in return, all I ask is a reference back to this web site along with title and author (http://uofugeron.wordpress.com) – thanks – Scott D. Wright, Ph.D.

Title: Caring to cultivate on the long row of life: An eclectic look at gardens, gardening, and the aging process
Author: Scott D. Wright, Ph.D.
Affiliation: Director and Associate Professor, Gerontology Interdisciplinary Program, University of Utah, 84112.

UPDATED: March 21, 2009

from NY Times, March 20, 2009 Reporter: Marian Burros

Obamas to Plant Vegetable Garden at White House 

    

PART I

The reason one can call a garden a state of the soul is that garden and soul are composed of the same essential ingredients, which splinter into an array of wondrous forms that, however diverse, preserve their kinship with one another. If soul and garden did not share a common substance, how could the latter reanimate the former and fill it with new life? How could it give the back its past as well as its future? 

Robert Pogue Harrison, 2008, Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition, p. 134

Preface

Whether you call them “recession gardens” (similar to the “Victory garden”) (see USA Today story – Feb. 20, 2009) – “Recession grows interest in seeds, vegetable gardening” http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2009-02-19-recession-vegetable-seeds_N.htm , there has been a strong and sustained effort in the last months to have the new President – Barak Obama – consider the possibility of leading the way in transforming the White House lawn into a functional garden space. The web site and organizational movement leading the way is associated with “Eat the View” –

“Eat the View!” is a campaign to urge the Obamas to replant a large organic Victory Garden on the First Lawn with the produce going to the White House kitchen and to local food pantries. ”Eat the View” is coordinated by Kitchen Gardeners International, a Maine-based 501c3 nonprofit network of 10,000 gardeners from 100 countries who are inspiring and teaching more people to grow some of their own food.” http://www.eattheview.org

Other related news stories – A White House Veggie Garden? We Can Only Hope

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/07/AR2009010701082.html

“The home vegetable garden, a thing of much toil and simple pleasure, has taken on enormous political and environmental symbolism. Voices in the local-food movement have formed a chorus urging the Obamas to dig up a good chunk of the South Lawn for a garden to feed the first family and local food banks…If Americans planted wartime victory gardens again, the argument goes, we would reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and unsustainable agricultural practices, feed our families with cheaper, more nutritious food and reduce obesity and disease.”

(see also Wall Street Journal article on related article – http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123214377908391635.html

All this about Gardens? and President Obama ?

Why all the fuss about gardens? Can this actually work and happen? I think so… and in the context of an aging society and the renewal to become savvy about economic strategies to grow your own (healthy) food, it is time to examine the history and the purpose and the aesthetics of gardens, especially as it relates to the aging process.

Introduction

Gardening is one of the most popular home-based leisure activities in the U.S. and represents a significant and salient activity in the lives of older adults (Ashton-Shaeffer & Constant, 2005; Bhatti, 2006).  Francese (2002) noted in his article, with the provocative title of “Horticulture is hot,” that the National Gardening Association claimed that 80% of US households tended to plants, which represented an increase of 65% from the year 1996. Francese (2002) also reported that the 55 to 64 year old age group was the cohort that spent the most on horticultural products and services and that the aging baby-boomers would continue to expand the spending and interest in gardening activities into the near future.

But why? Is there a connection between a greater interest in gardening and along with increasing aging? Is there some sort of human developmental imperative at work here? Or is this a cohort specific phenomenon? Or perhaps the functional allure of gardens and gardening in the later years is the result of multiple factors: historical, aesthetic, generational, psychological, and physiological? It appears that the jury is still out in relation to the scientific answers to these questions. Furthermore, there is little empirical evidence to point to any direct measurable relationship to a natural affinity between aging and gardening as a desired activity and preferred use of time in later life. In addition, we have to acknowledge that a good number of people in our hypertechnical world may find the notion of gardening as antiquated as the telegraph or little more than a self-sufficiency habit held over from the Great Depression era. It may even bring to mind the stereotypic and passive activities of “the golden years” associated with shuffleboard or a slow game of checkers in the city park. Or in other words, about as interesting and engaging a topic on aging as watching paint dry, and certainly not a topic to compete with the latest research on telomere degradation or a policy report centered on the Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug Plan.

And yet, there is much more to the nexus of gardening and aging than what one might assume. In fact, the roots go deep and there are fruitful outcomes upon closer examination of the intersect between the two.

 A brief review of the literature: Reaping what we have sown [a complete reference list will be posted with Part III of this posting]

Gardening as an activity to improve the quality of life for older adults has generated a substantial number of publications that address the role of indoor gardening and horticultural therapy within institutional populations (Brown, Allen, Dwozan, Mercer & Warren, 2004; Collins & O’Callaghan, 2007; Grant & Wineman, 2007; Kreidler, 2002; Reid, 2006; Wells, 1997 ¹) which is also reflected in the paradigmatic shift of “The Eden Alternative” ² in managing long-term care facilities (Thomas & Johansson, 2003; Weinstein, 1998). There are also significant publications on outdoor gardening activities for people who live in geriatric care settings (Ottosson & Grahn, 2005) and specifically for persons with dementia (Rodiek & Schwarz, 2008). We also know that gardening can serve as a “bridge-building” activity for enhancing intergenerational cooperation in community settings (Goff, 2004; McKee, 1995; Larson & Hockenberry, 2006; Predny & Relf, 2004), and that it can represent a form of legacy in older adults (Moller, 2005), and serve as a mechanism to engage in “successful aging” (Oh, 2005).

There are research findings to indicate gardening as an activity to enhance the physical and emotional well-being for older adults who reside in home and community-based dwellings. For example, Infantino (2001) found that the gardening experience had sustained older women in their cognitive and spiritual development. Heliker, Chadwick, and O’Connell (2000) found that horticultural projects (consisting of 12 weeks of interactive gardening classes) were instrumental in increasing a sense of psychological well-being in racial and culturally diverse groups. They also found that gardening helped to instill of deeper sense of legacy and spirituality and a deeper relationship with the earth and nature in the older participants. Similarly, Miiligan, Gatrell, and Bingley (2004) found that older adults benefited from gardening in communal garden allotments as it helped to overcome social isolation and contributed to the development of social networks. Although lawn care has been the most prevalent form of gardening nationwide, this dimension has been going through its own transformation and redefinition as many more people are looking to redefine the “lawn” into a more environmental friendly ³ and regionally appropriate recreational and social site for families, including the expansion of gardens (Grampp, 2008). Brown & Jameton (2000) have indicated that there are numerous benefits for the increase and support of gardening: food security and nutritional health (home grown produce has the potential to offset the cost of purchasing food; positive effects on physical health (as exercise), and overall community improvement (to enhance social capital; it can serve as a community organizing tool to combat poverty and provide a collective response to blighted city neighborhoods) and as a way of raising consciousness about environmental stewardship.

Brown and Jameton (2000) also suggest various community-based policy recommendations to encourage urban garden activities because, “Urban gardening raises our public awareness of the need to safeguard our environment, and especially our urban soils, from future pollution, erosion, and neglect” (p. 33) {see also Guerilla Gardening - http://www.newsociety.com/bookid/3945}

More specifically to older adults, Ashton and Schaeffer (2005) discovered many motivational factors for gardening in their investigation. For example, they found significant differences among older adults by marital status, education and health status in terms of motivational categories. The two most important categories were: physical fitness and creativity.

 

Perhaps it is best to summarize the findings of the importance of gardening in the lives of older adults by highlighting the work of Bhatti (2006) who found that the presence of and the interaction with gardens can have a major significance in the (re)creation of “home” in later life. In addition to the benefits of physical activity, there is the added dimension of what the garden symbolizes psychologically as a meaningful reason for existence, or as one older adult expressed it, “when I’m in the garden I can create my own paradise.” 

Ah yes, paradise. But not quite like the ones we associate with Dante’s work, or mythology, or in the biblical accounts in Genesis. As Harrison astutely points out,

“A garden that comes into being through one’s own labor and tending efforts is very different from the fantastical gardens where things preexist spontaneously, offering themselves gratuitously for enjoyment…For unlike early paradises, human-made gardens that are brought into and maintained in being by cultivation retain a signature of the human agency to which they owe their existence.” (pp. 6-7)

In the remainder of this paper, I will examine two domains of the nexus between gardening and the aging process. One domain will be to discover and highlight the many interesting nodes of intersection among the arts and humanities in relation to the themes of gardens, aging artists, writers and filmmakers. The second domain will address two issues: a) gardening as a mechanism to engage the cultivation of care in the social milieu of the aging individual, and b) as a way to enhance the notion of stewardship in supporting environmental health in the context of home and community based dwellings. But before we examine the interplay of those issues in greater detail, I will briefly review the history and purpose of gardens, and then examine the role of gardening and the aging process by highlighting the cross-fertilization of these issues in the arts and humanities.

How Does Your Garden Grow? Definitions, History, and Purposes

For many people, the word “garden” can evoke varied emotions and leaps of cognitive associations. It can also signify many things that have little to do with cultivating vegetables and flowers. Some may immediately think of an entertainment/ sports venue (e.g., Madison Square Garden); a biblical setting (e.g., The Garden of Eden) or some historical wonder of the world (e.g., The Hanging Gardens of Babylon); or pieces of literature such as The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges or Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt or The Garden of Last Days by Andre Dubus III; or the film The Constant Gardener directed by Fernando Meirelles (based on the novel by John le Carre); or exotic paintings like The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch or The Enchanted Garden by J.W. Waterhouse (see Albers, 1991) or exotic settings such as found in Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Colonna, 1999).

For others, there may be an immediate leap to the Butchart Gardens in Greater Victoria on Vancouver Island, Canada or the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden or Zen rock garden of the Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto, Japan (see Harte, 1999). Some may think of the Garden State (New Jersey) or if that is too far north then others may prefer Winter Garden, Florida. In the academic domain, gardens have served as a sociological focal point for assessing collectivist and bureaucratic cultures in conflict in the context of the “urban gardening movement” (Jamison, 1985). In the historical domain, there were the “Victory Gardens” in the 1940’s and with contemporary television, perhaps the PBS series, “The Victory Garden.” But for many people, a garden can simply be a plot of soil as close as your backyard and as modest as raised box with a few marigolds and tomato plants.

As Ross (1998; 1999) has noted, trying to pinpoint an exact definition (in the Wittgensteinian sense) of gardens is daunting,

“Consider a French formal garden, an English landscape garden, an Islamic water garden, a Japanese Zen garden, a backyard vegetable plot, suburban perennial bed. Gardens can be large or small, enclosed or unbounded, natural or geometric, dense or sparse, rolling or flat. They can contain tress and flowers, streams and fountains, mounds and grottoes, walls and ha-has, paths and trenches, temples and follies. Given this range it doesn’t seems promising to define “garden” in terms of content or features.” (p. 5)

Nevertheless, for the purposes of this paper, one can be advanced for conceptual purposes. According to Pizzoni (1999), gardens can be thought of as a place set aside for multiple uses such associated with horticulture and the cultivation of plans for food and medicinal herbs but it can also be seen as an expression of ornamental, religious and even political purposes. Gardens can even be considered an art form and “representative of civilizations and their cultures, and in particular of every age’s experience and depiction of nature” (p. 9). Although Pizzoli (1999) primarily examines gardens in the West from about the fourteenth century to the present day, Turner (2005) has explored the philosophy and design of gardens from 2000 BC to 2000AD and reviewed the uses of gardens in Egyptian, Greek and Roman culture, West Asian and Islamic cultures, through the Medieval and Renaissance periods, Baroque, Neoclassical and Romantic, and into the more modern era of abstract and post-abstract designs (see also Adams, 1991; Comito, 1978).

Conan and Whangheng (2008) have focused their masterpiece book on the role of gardens in city life and have examined the role of gardens in developing social and cultural life and facilitating economic well-being in various cities from an international perspective. In their edited book, several authors have pointed out that gardens have served both for pleasure and politics over the centuries and have served as repositories of cultural memories. One of the more fascinating chapters in the book presented information on the ecological and socioeconomic dimensions of homegardens in Kerala, India. And if the reader wanted to take a visual tour of over 500 gardens across the planet, there is the exquisite publication by Phaidon Press (2000), simply called The Garden Book, which provides a comprehensive and illustrated survey arranged in A-Z order complete with accompanying commentary “to place both garden and maker in their stylistic and historical context” (see also Taylor, 2006).  If one wanted to review the intimate history of the social-psychological and utilitarian transformation of “home grounds” for middle-class families, the publication by Grampp (2008) is indispensable (see also Constantine, 1981).  And finally in another edited book by Punch (1992), there is the presentation of an extensive profile of gardening as it has been involved in the general cultural life of the United States from its very beginnings with the first European settlers in Virginia and Massachusetts (approximately 1584 and onward).

The last chapter by Michael Pollan (1992) (“The Garden’s Prospects in America”) ⁴ is illuminating in its analysis of the development of gardens in America. Pollan (1992) argued that although both the front lawn and the wilderness park are brilliant in their own regard, they actually “represent the antitheses of gardens, and their hold on our imaginations and yards has done much to retard the development of the American garden” (p. 261). In fact, Pollan suggests that our motives for gardens have usually been more utilitarian than aesthetic or sensual, and he provocatively takes on the transcendentalists (as Thoreau struggled with the activity of gardening in relation to the “moral” dilemma of altering the natural landscape) as harboring a negative view of the function of gardens. While Pollan believes that defending wilderness and the right to have a front lawn are essentially a part of our cultural pedigree, he also believes that the America is shifting toward the middle landscape of the garden, which makes both environmental and economic sense. Pollan wrote,

“Gardening tutors us in nature’s ways, fostering an ethic of give and take with respect to the land. Gardens instruct us in the particularities of place. Gardens also teach the necessary if still rather un-American lesson that nature and culture can be compromised, that we might be able to find some middle ground between the wilderness and the lawn…we need the garden – and the garden’s ethic – too much today for it not to flourish.” (p. 265)

Gardens, Aging, and Classical Literature

            The portrayal of gardens as real sanctuary, as metaphor and as imagery to provide exotic backgrounds has been a part of the heritage of literature throughout history (see Miller, 1982). For example, as Shorto (2008) has pointed out in his fascinating book, Descartes’ Bones, there is the “engraved image of a bearded man, dressed in tunic and tights, digging in a garden – the seeker after philosophical truth in the guise of a humble laborer?” (p. 14) on the first edition front cover of Descartes’s (1637) famous treatise, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Searching for Truth in the Sciences. Here we have the garden as a metaphor for cultivating the kind of food for that would provide sustenance to in the philosophical domain. However, for the purposes of this article I will present only a few exemplars to highlight the nexus.

In order to set the stage in this section, Marx (1985) has suggested an intriguing proposition that the bucolic setting, the pastoral world, and the role of gardener to be found in classical literature and poetry has been very much highly symbolic and associated with the later stages of life. That is, to garden is typically gerontological because the pastoral world was deemed to be separate from the “life of action” (vita activa) that was associated with young adulthood and middle stages of life which focused on the maintenance of life out in the world.  In contrast, Marx (1985) claims that in old age there is a (necessary) retreat to the pastoral and a resulting renaissance in the mind and body by returning to the “natural world.” What is provocative about Marx’s analysis is how there appears to be the subtle hint of the traditional “disengagement theory” at work here, but what is emphasized more strongly is that the role of the “old shepherd” is to serve as a reservoir of wisdom separate and away from away from the corruptions and tribulations of the court and the city. Marx (2005) believes that the portrayal of old age in the pastoral domain was the needed to balance against the excesses of pleasure and play of “youthful Epicurism” (e.g., folly) so that the sense of responsibility and care was instilled in the chain of generations as a desired virtue in order to deal with the hardships and challenges of life, which inevitably would appear across the life course.

And so, we could perhaps begin with The Metamorphoses of Ovid or Hesiod’s Words and Days or Cicero’s On Old Age (Cato Maior de Senectute) to examine the nexus, but the I will propose that the proper starting point should be with Virgil’s Georgics.

Virgil (70BCE -19 BCE) wrote the poem Georgics (the word Georgics refers to primarily to “farming”) during the 30s BCE and most likely finished it in 29, just as the civil war between Octavian and Antony had finally come to an end. This would put Virgil at just over 40 years of age, and relatively speaking, at the peak of his senior status in the understanding of the life course at that time but perhaps not senectus yet (see Parkin, 2003). From one perspective, Georgics can be thought of as the middle grand publication of Virgil sandwiched in between Bucolics (or Eclogues) and what some consider his magnum opus, the Aeneid.

          

As Lembke (2005) has noted, “The poem {Georgics} is indeed a love song to almost everything that grows or gazes on the land.”  Ferry (2005) proposed that Georgics “is one of the great songs, maybe the greatest we have of human accomplishment in the difficult circumstances of the way things are” (p. xiv). Georgics is Virgil’s call for a return to the land – to begin again – to reconnect to what made, from Virgil’s perspective, the Roman culture steadfast, prosperous, and virtuous. The poem is also didactic and very much a template and design for interacting with the land and being attentive to what Ferry (2005) noted as Virgil’s ability to engage the “ecstatic and tender celebrations of the very life in things,” and more importantly how these “celebrations” interact with human existence (see also Haarhoff, 1958).  In the Georgics, one can appreciate Virgil’s attentiveness to the cycles of seasons, and to the changes in weather, and to the rhythms of the seasons and the cycle of birth and death, and the inevitable unfolding of sickness and aging. But of paramount importance, is that Virgil believes that humans are summoned to labor, and to engage with the land, so that a resulting broader cultural odyssey may flourish based on the core elements of farming. Through care of the land, we begin to care for each other, and from there follow the arts and cultural blossoming and the resulting the harvesting of another kind: poetry, art, music, sculptures, law, and ethics. The care of the land is essential and Lembke (2005) noted,

A message inhabits the instructions: only at our gravest peril do we fail to husband the resources on which out lived depend. That council is as valid for today and tomorrow as it was for long-gone yesterdays (p. xiii).

            Of direct relevance to the theme in this paper, is the sub-story within the fourth Georgic which captures the exquisite writing of Virgil and message of reward that comes from care and cultivation based on an ethic of both labor and love. Here we meet an old man from Corycian who is at work on his small patch of land that was at one time not fertile enough to be plowed by oxen, but with his dedicated attention it has been transformed,

            But this old man
            Carefully planted white lilies, vervain, and poppies,
            And different sorts of vegetables for his table,
            And thus he made for himself a happiness
            That was equal to the happiness of kings,
            And when he came home at night his feast was free. (Ferry, 2005 p.151)

            The lines in this vignette, which appears in the middle of the Georgic primarily profiling beekeeping, is less didactic and more poetic in the sheer strength of the action and sensuality by use of vivid descriptions of the labor that is needed for all the seasons (see de Bruyn, 2004). It is believed that the old man was one of the re-settled pirates who was conquered by Pompey the Great in decades past, and Quint, (2006) has proposed in his review of the new translations of Georgics by Ferry (2005) and Lembke (2005) that,

“…the old gardener thus carries some of the poem’s political hopes as well as its ethical message. From a life of turmoil, he has settled into quiet usefulness and contentment, tamed by work and hardship, and even makes a thing of beauty in his flower garden, an analogue to the poem itself .” (p. 35).

            An overarching theme throughout the Georgics is the didactic lesson of  “as you sow, so shall you reap.” ⁵ It is a very much a parallel to the notion of karmic behavior that understands progress towards happiness and well-being is highly dependent on the service that you have rendered onto the land and to kith and kin, to neighbors and to community. And it all begins in your backyard.  And this will examined in greater detail in the second node of this paper as I review Voltaire’s philosophy via Candide such that with all of the civil wars and political strife that swirled about and over the years, there can be a return to where it all begins: with the soil, the plants, and the animals. This serves as the cornerstone of civilization – that is, to care. To garden is to cultivate is to care and though it takes effort, labor, and sweat – the rewards and dividends are accrued by all. And so gardening is both vita activa and vita contempliva. Work and reflection. To reap and to sow. To attend to and to care – constantly. Harrison (2008) succinctly weaves these themes together,

“A human created garden comes into being in and through time. It is planned by the gardener in advance, then it is seeded or cultivated accordingly, and in due time it yields its fruits or intended gratifications. Meanwhile the gardener is beset by new cares day in and day out. For like a story, a garden has its own developing plot, as it were, whose intrigues keep the caretaker under more or less constant pressure. The true gardener is always ‘the constant gardener’” (p. 7)

Gardens, Aging, and Modern Literature

          The conjunction of gardening and literature is substantial and readers are encouraged to review Marranca’s (2003) anthology and Garmey’s edited book (1999) for an introduction and extensive review in this domain. For a more contemporary non-fiction perspective, Arthur Hellyer’s (1936) Your Garden Week by Week, Jamaica Kincaid’s (1999) My Garden (Book):, Diane Ackerman’s (2001) Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden (2001), Michael Pollan’s (2003) Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education, Barbara Kingsolver’s (2007) Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life and Robert Fenton’s (2002) critical review in the The New York Review of Books are highly recommended. Following the pattern of the classical literature section, I will examine only a few exemplars, specifically as it connects with the aging process.

          Following the theme of a labor of love when it comes to the dedication to gardening, many people will think of one of the best-selling American non-fiction classics which is Walden by Henry David Thoreau.⁶ As a nature writer, he had the uncanny ability to “master the art of descriptive writing” (Harding, 1995) and in one chapter, Thoreau dedicates the writing directly to his bean field,

“I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus. But should I raise them? Only Haven knows. This was my curious labor all summer – to make this portion of the earth’s surface, which had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the like before, sweet wild fruits and pleasant flowers, produce instead this pulse.”

But while Thoreau had the ability to capture the art and beauty of being connected to the soil, his stay at Walden was relatively short, a two-year experiment into his late twenties, and then he left to pursue other travels. If one wanted to find a more “constant gardener,” across the entire life course and into the retirement years, perhaps we could better start with Thomas Jefferson, Governor of Virginia, Secretary of State in Washington’s cabinet, Vice-president and President of the United States, President of the American Philosophical Society for eighteen years, and founder of the University of Virginia, who was also an avid gardener and we are fortunate to read of his observations and activities in gardening in a publication titled, The Garden Book (Betts, 1944), which he began in 1776 and continued it until the autumn of 1824, two years before his death at the age of 83. The Garden Book is a remarkable account of Jefferson’s meticulous note taking on his botanical interests and indicated a devotion to the “culture of the earth.”

          Here is one account of Jefferson’s vast amount of correspondence, at the age of 68 years old, in a letter to a Charles Willson Peale written in 1811 (from Betts, 1944)

No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden. Such a variety of subjects, some one always comming to perfection, the failure of one thing repaired by the success of another, and instead of one harvest a continued one through the year. Under a total want of demand except for our family table, I am still devoted to the garden. But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.

Although Jefferson completed so much in his life, his return to his beloved land and gardens became his therapeutic activity, whereas for Hans Christian Andersen, the garden became an allegory for his lifework writing folk tales (“fairy tales”) which had more significance with the world of adulthood than for children. The folk tale, “The Gardener and the Gentry” was written toward the end of his career and two years before his death in 1872. Hans Christian Andersen wrote the “The Gardener and the Gentry” as story to covey his frustration at being a lifelong writer and fulfilling the role of the “genuine storyteller as a cultivator of the social good” but having to “suffer the indignities of serving upper-class patrons who did not appreciate his great accomplishments” (Zipes, 2007; p. xxix). In the story, the reader can sense the deliberate parallel between what Andersen believed was dedication to the craft of writing (the artist cultivating the words) that would make up a story and the role of the gardener who would place the same amount of care and attention to the cultivating of plants and vegetables. And yet, in both cases there is the lack of appreciation for what the working class can produce and create that is virtually taken for granted or assumed to be the result of other forces beyond the “commoner” in society.

          The use of gardening as a metaphor and allegory continues in the works of noted writers such as Frances Hodgson Burnett, Charles Baudelaire and T.S. Eliot. The book The Secret Garden (1949) by Burnett, is considered a children’s classic and the garden carries the prospect of renaissance and healing powers, but what is of interest to our theme is the portrayal of the old gardener, Ben Weatherstaff, who also has a stake in the care of the garden as well.  To me, this presents an interesting representation of the generational connection with the healing properties of caring for one another and that the illustration by Nora Unwin between pages 234-235 is quit remarkable with its color print scene of three children walking through a vibrant garden of flowers, trees in bloom, escorted by various wild creatures, all under the protectful watch of the old gardener. But this is one side of the coin with gardens being targeted as a place of magical renewal; there is also the other perspective whereby gardens represent the philosophical confrontation with the cycle of life and death. Although Baudelaire lived a relatively short period of time (46 years), his contributions in poetry, especially associated with Les Fleurs du mal (published in 1857), point to the existential challenges of suffering and death, and he uses gardening imagery in one poem to convey his frustrations and dreams at that point in his life’s journey (Baudelaire, 2006).  There is a cultivation of flowers (of evil) representing moral dilemmas that most must face and endure with the flow of time and inevitable aging.  The poem, L’Ennemi (titled and translated as The Ruined Garden by Robert Lowell; see Mathews & Mathews, 1989) where the organic elements of soil, seeds, rain, and heat add to the unfolding drama of a life at the edge of survival and ultimate destruction (see also Mahood, 2008).

In the case of T.S. Eliot (1991), the imagery of the rose-garden in the Four Quartets carries a multi-layered meaning of spirituality and the loss of Paradise within the cycles of life and death (Wagner, 1954). The Four Quartets were written over a span of several years (1935-1942) and in the last quarter of Eliot’s life. In “Burnt Norton” the rose-garden conveys memories and mythology of time passing with human existence (mere moments) compared to the history of humanity, civilization, and all that has gone before. And in “East Coker” another set of images to convey an Eden-like time and place that knew of the cycles of life and mortality seemingly lost in the turbulent wake of a perpetual-moving modernity. The flow of time and the unfolding of generations and the march of history; and as the centuries press on, we seek to find our place and our mark.

We need sanctuary from the rolling tide of, as Harrison phrased it, “rage, death, and endless suffering.” And we find solace in various beliefs, mythologies, stories, family, and in love. But Harrison notes that we also have the counterweight of our gardens.

“Where history unleashes its destructive and annihilating forces, we must, if we are to preserve our sanity, to say nothing of our humanity, work against these forces and allow them to grow in us. We must seek out healing or redemptive forces and allow them to grow in us. That is what Voltaire means to tend our garden.” (p. x)

I find it correlative that Carl Jung was using a similar theme to address his understanding of his own life in his book Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1989). In 1957, at the age of eighty-one years of age, Jung began to work with Aniela Jaffe to complete this major work before he died in 1961. The enlightening passage is from the prologue and is both vegetative and seminal in its garden metaphor by picturing life individually and collectively as sustaining and regenerative over the ages (see also Sabini, 2002).

“Life has always seemed to me like plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away-an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.” (p. 4)

End of Part I – Part II will appear in the first week of March 2009.

Thanks, Scott D. Wright, Ph.D.