Environmental History and Garden History in China and the West: Problems, Methods and Responses

Abstract

This article examines why garden historians of the West and China have not placed gardens within wider environmental and ecological processes, and why environmental historians have largely overlooked private gardens. Explanations for this neglect may be found in different disciplinary foundations and motivations, methodologies and perspectives. I demonstrate the benefits of combining garden and environmental history by analysing a twelfth-century garden from China using an ecocultural approach, which examines the material and cultural, ecological and ideological aspects of a particular garden. From this case study I argue that an ecocultural approach offers one way of bridging the divide separating environmental history and garden history, and by extension that spanning material and cultural analyses of gardens and wider environments.