The world enters a garden: why books about garden spaces are booming

In times of political upheaval, climate uncertainty, and rapid progress toward a technological future, civilization cannot help but return to the idea of the garden, to that kind of lost Eden that represents a space of peace and balance where one can cultivate one's inner self or dream of a new utopia connected to nature.

“I've never liked the word utopia; the great utopias have always ended in violence. Besides, in Greek it means "no place ," a place that doesn't exist. Thomas More imagined the island of Utopia, which is an ideal, a reality opposed to everyday life. But the garden is a real place, within everyone's reach, and it's like a dream that can be realized with a little attention to a place and some plants.”

"Montaigne said that philosophy should teach us how to die. I think gardening does."

This is what gardener and essayist Marco Martella, with whom La Vanguardia spoke during his visit to the Peralada Festival, dedicated this year to the concept of the garden, asserts. The question that haunts this Italian, who writes in French, is that anyone can achieve this utopia of a world based on values contrary to those of contemporary society: patience, care, attention, modesty.

"Because the gardener knows he must be modest in the face of arrogance, the hubris of contemporary man who dominates, conquers, changes, and passes. The gardener must make himself small," adds the author of A Small World, a Perfect World and Fleurs (Elba).

Can things be changed politically through the garden?

“I don't think so, but the garden confronts us with our responsibilities as human beings. What do you want to do? How do you want to inhabit the world? Not just with respect to nature, but to others, to everything. And there's no need to create programs, projects, manifestos, just get things done. It's a utopia within everyone's reach. But does this contemporary idea of the garden as a model for the landscape and the world exist? How can the garden model be exported beyond? How can we be gardeners in the world? A question every garden brings us back to.”

The Spanish publishing world has lagged behind the English and Italian worlds when it comes to garden literature, but is now experiencing a boom. From the garden philosophy proposed by philosopher Santiago Beruete, who this year publishes a new essay, PLAN(e)TA. Philosophical Kaleidoscope (Turner), to the botanical journey through the great paintings traced by Eduardo Barba in The Garden of the Prado (Espasa), now in its tenth edition, or Apprentice of Happiness. A Life in the Garden (Errata Naturae) by Italian author Pia Pera.

It doesn't have to be a Versailles or a Retiro park; a carefully tended pot in your home is a personal garden. 'That's my rose,' said the Little Prince, 'and it's important to me because I've taken care of it.' Eduardo Barba, author of 'The Garden of the Prado'

“The garden is the place where everything becomes reality, from the most mundane to the most divine,” Barba points out. “It is one of the most ephemeral and fragile human creations, but the seed it leaves in those who create and enjoy it is everlasting. It is one of the most wonderful schools of democracy; it doesn't have to be a Versailles or a Retiro park, but rather a carefully tended pot in the house is a personal garden. 'That is my rose,' said the Little Prince, 'and it is important to me because I have cared for it.'”

“Gardens are in fashion,” confirms editor Clara Pastor, “but it won't be temporary: humans are reaching out toward nature, toward a return to silence and harmony with nature.” Her publishing house, Elba, has several authors dedicated to the subject. Milanese Umberto Pasti, who one day woke up under a fig tree in a remote village on the Moroccan coast and knew he would build his dream botanical garden there, is the author of Gardens: The Real Ones and the Others (Elba) and Lost in Paradise (Acantilado). There, without water or electricity, he has set up his foundation for Moroccan children who are helping to create Eden. Hence, it's advantageous to be in the media, to appear in fashion magazines, and to have fans like Queen Camilla.

This Saturday, in Peralada William Christie: “I couldn’t choose between gardening and music.”

William Christie has been based in his gardens in Thiré, in the Vendée region of France, since 1987. The musical director, born in Buffalo, New York, located what was a vacant lot 81 years ago and was completely captivated, dreaming of creating, from scratch, with his imagination and his hands, an inspiring garden in which to hold his own Baroque music festival. “Creating a garden is not just about letting it grow, but also about composing, as if it were a score. It involves a collaboration between nature and human intention, even if the starting point is vacant or seemingly worthless land,” he explained recently, in connection with his appearance this Saturday (8 p.m.) at the Peralada Festival with his ensemble Les Arts Florissants. Musician-gardener or gardener-musician—“I couldn't choose”—Christie has swapped his gardens for those of the Castell for a day. But in August, his concerts are held in Thiré, in that organic yet structured space that he personally tends with the help of three gardeners and some apprentices. “When I think of this garden, I think of the music I love,” he says. Among Versailles-style flowerbeds, a pond appears where Les Arts Florissants offers floating concerts by torchlight. And musical walks on green footbridges are looming. Here, music flows forth. Also in the Théâtre de Verdure: a welcoming vegetal amphitheater formed by yew trees pruned in a chinoiserie style. “I am deeply moved by nature that walks hand in hand with human beings, that dialogues with them.” The garden as a living, almost human space, capable of sensing drought or neglect. Such is the sensitive and affectionate relationship the master has with nature.

On another track is the French priest of the ecological garden Gilles Clément, who introduced the concepts of a moving garden – plants change location because their seeds travel – and a planetary garden , in which all societies are concerned about the subject.

The currents are diverse: in the Mediterranean and Latin America, the dry garden prevails, with little water; then, in contrast to the aesthetic French garden, there is the wild garden, which Clément advocates. But between philosophy and activism there are sensitive, poetic positions, such as that of Martella, author of the heteronyms Jörn de Précy – a supposed 19th-century Icelandic gardener and scholar, settled in Oxfordshire, under whose name he published The Lost Garden (2018) and wrote for the magazine Jardins – and Teodor Cerić, a fictional Croatian poet who flees Bosnia, takes refuge in a garden, and publishes Gardens in Time of War .

In the end, it's Martella that the booksellers fall in love with, for the garden is anti-philosophy, or a philosophy of simplicity. "Montaigne said that philosophy should teach us how to die. I believe that gardening does. The relationship between your death and your life acquires greater value because it is inserted into a cosmic movement: that of the life that follows, the seasons that repeat themselves," Martella adds.

Beauty is, according to the essayist, the ultimate goal. He is saddened by the fact that in the ecological garden, beauty is abandoned in favor of ecological balance or biodiversity. “For me, beauty is the main reason; otherwise, why make a garden? If you are interested in life, go to the forest. The garden is this work where man intervenes in the forms of nature to create something new, personal. It is a dream of beauty come true.”