The desire to garden in difficult times has deep and distant roots

    The desire to garden in difficult times has deep and distant roots

    The desire and need to garden in difficult times like this actually has deep and distant roots.

    He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him

    If there is one thing that the coronavirus pandemic has spread around the world, it is an irrepressible desire to gardening. Suffice it to say that in the early days of the lockdown, seed sellers reported unprecedented demand, as reported by The Guardian. And we are not just talking about the vegetable garden, which could be explained by the fear of hunger, but about gardening in general.





    According to what Jennifer Wren Atkinson of the University of Washington wrote, author of the book "Gardenland", in an article published in "The Conversation", this desire could reveal another type of hunger, that of physical contact, of rediscovery of nature, of creative expression, of belonging and connection.

    The coronavirus has catapulted us into an era of detachment and gardening seems to compensate for this remoteness, as an antidote able to put us in contact with something real. Because yes, meetings on the web help us connect but still remain virtual, without smells, without the possibility of touching each other, without the physical presence of others.

    Gardening, on the other hand, is immersive, it stimulates all the senses, gives us the possibility to use the body at 360 degrees. And it reminds us that not everything can be done through a screen, underlining the importance of non-virtual reality. Because a tutorial on the web is not enough to learn how to grow plants, as the famous British landscape architect Russell Page pointed out, one must necessarily have direct experience to really know them.

    But in reality the loneliness, accompanied by a feeling of inner emptiness, was only exacerbated by the pandemic, it already existed and the proliferation of the Internet is one of the several causes. Another is undoubtedly, in Jennifer's opinion, the disconnection from nature, connected among other things to lifestyles that have contributed to her devastation. This is why more and more people are beginning to change course, taking an interest in green issues, cheering on animals, changing habits in the name of a more sustainable life.

    And history reaffirms this nostalgia for gardens, even in unsuspected times: like when Americans, who before industrialization were mostly farmers, moving to the city to work in factories and offices, felt the need to cultivate small vegetable gardens and domestic gardens, perhaps nostalgic for the agricultural life of the past.



    Like when African Americans, according to Alice Walker in her essay "In search of our mothers' gardens", after having finished brutal days in the fields, still found time to devote themselves to gardening, perceiving it not as a trivial job but as an act of authentic artistic expression. Black women, in particular, found their own “personal image of beauty,” Walker says in that pastime.

    In short, gardening seems to reveal, according to Atkinson, an ancestral need for contact with nature, a return to origins, a need for reality outside the screen. A reality that, regardless of us, goes on anyway.


    FONTE: The Conversation


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