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The Garden
Our Four-Thousand-Year Quest for Paradise
Author: Jonathan Bate
Narrator: Jonathan Bate
Unabridged: TBD
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: 02/09/2027
Categories: Nonfiction, Architecture, Art
Synopsis
A globe-spanning, never-before-told epic history of the garden—from antiquity to present
Gardens have always been sacred spaces, allowing humans both to return to nature and to tame it. Avid gardener and literary historian Jonathan Bate traces our fascination with gardens across four millennia, exploring their enduring influence on art, literature, philosophy, politics, and religion. Just as the Garden of Eden is foundational to the Abrahamic traditions, gardens are a major preoccupation for authors like Ovid, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Emily Dickinson, and have carried great significance for everyone from kings to monks.
Woven together with a magnificent portrait of our cultural obsession with the garden is an illuminating account of horticultural ingenuity, from the gardens of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to the pleasure gardens of Versailles and public green spaces like New York City’s Central Park. Along the way, Bate offers practical botanical insights: Why have certain rose growers preferred old varieties over new? What makes a weed a weed? And how do certain plants serve essential roles in maintaining a garden’s health?
In this globe-spanning, exuberant, and richly illustrated work, Bate unearths an epic alternative human history and reminds us that to cultivate a garden is to practice care — for the earth, for others, and for the fragile beauty that sustains us.
Gardens have always been sacred spaces, allowing humans both to return to nature and to tame it. Avid gardener and literary historian Jonathan Bate traces our fascination with gardens across four millennia, exploring their enduring influence on art, literature, philosophy, politics, and religion. Just as the Garden of Eden is foundational to the Abrahamic traditions, gardens are a major preoccupation for authors like Ovid, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Emily Dickinson, and have carried great significance for everyone from kings to monks.
Woven together with a magnificent portrait of our cultural obsession with the garden is an illuminating account of horticultural ingenuity, from the gardens of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to the pleasure gardens of Versailles and public green spaces like New York City’s Central Park. Along the way, Bate offers practical botanical insights: Why have certain rose growers preferred old varieties over new? What makes a weed a weed? And how do certain plants serve essential roles in maintaining a garden’s health?
In this globe-spanning, exuberant, and richly illustrated work, Bate unearths an epic alternative human history and reminds us that to cultivate a garden is to practice care — for the earth, for others, and for the fragile beauty that sustains us.