The Garden as Art, Hobby, and the Good Life

Abstract

Gardening is a popular practice despite the abundant and affordable food at the grocery store, suggesting gardening is more than just a way to obtain food. The purpose of this article is to explore these other motivations. Evolutionary and pragmatic motivations are first explored, and then discarded, in favor of a values-driven approach. Gardening is depicted as both a form of art and a hobby. As an art form, the writings of iconic philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Martin Heidegger—as well as modern philosophers—are used to articulate the meaning of gardening as an aesthetic experience. As a hobby, gardening is a socially approved form of leisure and productive play. The conclusion is that, in addition to obvious physiological benefits such as food and exercise, gardening helps us acquire higher needs, such as self-actualization and transcendence. Why do we garden? No simple answer can suffice. Gardening, like many interests, is performed both for an end product and for the process itself. Gardeners can hardly be expected to be able to articulate their reasons, just as sports fans would have difficulty articulating why they watch football, or music lovers explaining why songs mesmerize them. When pressed, their answers will be mostly a tautology (e.g., I simply like it). However, this does not mean we cannot make progress in understanding the motivations for gardening. Gardening is a form of exercise, it is a hobby, and is performed for aesthetic pleasure, and research on motivations for all three of these exist—especially that regarding aesthetics.