O’Brien - Gardening: Philosophy for Everyone- Cultivating Wisdom

VOLUME EDITOR

DAN OBRIEN is a Research Fellow at Oxford Brookes University,
an Honorary Research Fellow at Birmingham University, and an
Associate Lecturer with the Open University. He is the author of
An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge (2006) and Humes
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: A Readers Guide
(with Alan Bailey, 2006). In addition, he has recently edited a special
volume of Philosophica on the epistemology of testimony.

SERIES EDITOR

FRITZ ALLHOFF is an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy
Department at Western Michigan University, as well as a Senior
Research Fellow at the Australian National Universitys Centre for
Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. In addition to editing the
Philosophy for Everyone series, Allhoff is the volume editor or co-editor
for several titles, including Wine & Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007),
Whiskey & Philosophy (with Marcus P. Adams, Wiley, 2009), and
Food & Philosophy (with Dave Monroe, Wiley-Blackwell, 2007).

PHILOSOPHY FOR EVERYONE

Series editor: Fritz Allhoff

Not so much a subject matter, philosophy is a way of thinking. Thinking not just about the Big Questions, but about little ones too. This series invites everyone to ponder things they care about, big or small, significant, serious or just curious.

Running & Philosophy:
A Marathon for the Mind
Edited by Michael W. Austin

Wine & Philosophy:
A Symposium on Thinking and Drinking
Edited by Fritz Allhoff

Food & Philosophy:
Eat, Think and Be Merry
Edited by Fritz Allhoff and Dave Monroe

Beer & Philosophy:
The Unexamined Beer Isnt Worth Drinking
Edited by Steven D. Hales

Whiskey & Philosophy:
A Small Batch of Spirited Ideas
Edited by Fritz Allhoff and Marcus P. Adams

College Sex Philosophy for Everyone:
Philosophers With Benefits
Edited by Michael Bruce
and Robert M. Stewart

Cycling Philosophy for Everyone:
A Philosophical Tour de Force
Edited by Jess Ilundin-Agurruza
and Michael W. Austin

Climbing Philosophy for Everyone:
Because Its There
Edited by Stephen E. Schmid

Hunting Philosophy for Everyone:
In Search of the Wild Life
Edited by Nathan Kowalsky

Christmas Philosophy for Everyone:
Better Than a Lump of Coal
Edited by Scott C. Lowe

Cannabis Philosophy for Everyone:
What Were We Just Talking About?
Edited by Dale Jacquette

Porn Philosophy for Everyone:
How to Think With Kink
Edited by Dave Monroe

Serial Killers Philosophy for Everyone:
Being and Killing
Edited by S. Waller

Dating Philosophy for Everyone:
Flirting With Big Ideas
Edited by Kristie Miller and Marlene Clark

Gardening Philosophy for Everyone:
Cultivating Wisdom
Edited by Dan OBrien

Motherhood Philosophy for Everyone:
The Birth of Wisdom
Edited by Sheila Lintott

Fatherhood Philosophy for Everyone:
The Dao of Daddy

Edited by Lon s. Nease
and Michael W. Austin

Forthcoming books in the series:

Fashion Philosophy for Everyone
Edited by Jessica Wolfendale
and Jeanette Kennett

Coffee Philosophy for Everyone
Edited by Scott Parker
and Michael W. Austin

Blues Philosophy for Everyone
Edited by Abrol Fairweather
and Jesse Steinberg

This edition first published 2010
2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd except for editorial material and organization
2010 Dan OBrien

Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwells publishing program has been merged with Wileys global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gardening philosophy for Everyone:
cultivating wisdom / edited by Dan OBrien.

p. cm. (Philosophy for everyone)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-4443-3021-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. GardeningPhilosophy.
2. GardensPhilosophy. I. OBrien, Dan, 1968 II. Title: Gardening philosophy for everyone.

SB454.3.P45G36 2010

635.01dc22

2010004722

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

DAVID E. COOPER

FOREWORD

From my point of view, as a gardener, I consider the garden fundamentally as a spiritual and cognitive experience. So writes the distinguished Spanish garden designer and philosophy graduate of Madrid University Fernando Caruncho. Appreciation of the garden, he explains, requires a maturity of emotion and understanding alike. The implied contrast is with the experience of the garden simply as a hobby, as a smallholding, or as a source of pleasing sights, sounds, and smells. The contributors to Gardening Philosophy for Everyone write from a viewpoint similar to Carunchos and, like him, they are as much concerned with gardening, an activity, as with the products of this activity, gardens. Of the many aspects of the spiritual and cognitive experience of gardening and gardens discussed in their contributions, three are especially salient: the moral, symbolic, and temporal.

The idea of the garden as a theatre for the cultivation of moral sensibility goes back at least to Pliny the Younger, whose own gardens afforded him the promise of a good life and a serious one, of cultivating himself through cultivating them. As several essays in this book demonstrate, it is an idea that, albeit with many permutations, has persisted. It is attested to, for example, in General Lafayettes estate near Paris, with its celebration of liberty and republican virtues, and in the humbler kitchen gardens or allotments that express an ideal of self-sufficiency. This ethical tradition, for several contributors, is one that, moreover, deserves to persist, for the garden as a place that invites the exercise of care and humility, a regard for the good of plants and creatures, and an appreciation of natures workings is indeed a source of moral education.