The Garden as Art, Hobby, and the Good Life (2024)

Keywords: gardening; horticulture; philosophy; transcendence; values

Platonic forms and terminal values

Asking a big question such as “why we garden” requires us to develop conceptual models of human nature. This article uses a variety of studies from the fields of history, psychology, and philosophy. It does not attempt to identify the single major motivation, but instead seeks a synthesis for why people spend time and money growing plants for pleasure.

If gardens are more than just an alternative source of food, what exactly is the gardener attempting to achieve? It must be something more subtle, something that makes gardens less a means to an end and closer to the end itself. The general goals humans pursue in life are referred to by psychologists as terminal values, and research suggests a standard list of 18 universal terminal values: 1) true friendship, 2) mature love, 3) self-respect, 4) happiness, 5) inner harmony, 6) equality, 7) freedom, 8) pleasure, 9) social recognition, 10) wisdom, 11) salvation, 12) family security, 13) national security, 14) a sense of accomplishment, 15) a world of beauty, 16) a world at peace, 17) a comfortable life, and 18) an exciting life (Rokeach, 1973).

In philosophy, such terminal values can be approached as platonic forms, reaching back to the writings of Plato and his idea that a flower may be beautiful, but beauty is itself a “thing” that exists independently of that flower. An effective garden is one that is in harmony with nature, and “harmony” also exists separately and transcendent of a harmonious garden. When Plato described the “highest” or “one” god, he named it the Demiurge, and explained the Demiurge used the template of the beauty-form to create beautiful objects, and the template of the harmony-form to craft a natural world in balance (Plato, 1977). When humans seek happiness, tranquility, and meaning, they are reaching for singular goals that seem to exist above and beyond the world of natural objects. They are yearning to encounter platonic forms.

It is easy to see how gardening can provide a connection to many—perhaps all—of these terminal values. Being able to grow one’s own food elicits self-respect, freedom, and family security. Victory gardens during World War II aimed at national security. Less affluent communities today establish community gardens as a way of acquiring the same fruits and vegetables as the more affluent, achieving a semblance of equality (Norwood and Mix, 2019). Learning how to prune tomatoes properly instills a sense of sagacity, achieving wisdom. In a Mary garden, salvation can be sought; the exercise gardening provides can be pleasurable; and a well-maintained garden certainly provides a feeling of a world of beauty, a world at peace (Campbell, 2019).

Although these terminal values are useful concepts, explaining that gardens achieve outcomes like “a world of beauty” still does not tell us much. It begs the question of what “beauty” is. Asking these questions requires some sort of conceptual framework in how we encounter the world, and this article adopts Roger Scruton’s (2014) cognitive dualism. Scruton contends that humans experience the world through two distinct approaches: 1) the physical laws of the world and 2) interpersonal relationships and meaning.

Consider the first approach. A pecan tree (Carya illinoinensis) can certainly be described in terms of the wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation reflected off the tree and entering the human eye, just as a song can be described by the frequencies of its audio waves. The tree’s growth and fruit are driven by biological processes, just as a poem (and any human activity) has evolutionary origins. These physical laws are important when considering evolutionary motives for gardening, but alone they provide only disappointing answers to our question of “why we garden,” so consider the second approach, where landscapes and music are understood by humans’ relationship to each other, the world, and to platonic forms. If that pecan tree has belonged to the same family for multiple generations, it is a character in the family’s saga, and this character’s role is better described by interpersonal human relationships than waves of electromagnetic radiation. If the tree falls during a thunderstorm, the loss is more than just a reduction in future pecans or a change in scenery. A part of the family itself is gone, and stories about the tree will be told.

In what follows, this article first considers the motivations for gardening that might derive from evolutionary forces (Scruton’s first approach to life). That discussion, however, can only take us so far, inducing us to turn to Scruton’s second component of cognitive duality. The article then considers the meaning that gardening provides in a person’s life. There we will see that gardening, whether considered a work of art or a hobby, is a profound act of artistic expression and personal virtue.

The evolutionary approach

The pleasure of gardening can be explained in part by evolutionary pressures, much like the joy of sex and food. Researchers have suggested that artistic endeavors such as gardening may have emanated from behavioral tendencies that have already evolved (Tiege et al., 2021). For example, an appreciation for nutritious food and the desire to set such foods apart from dangerous foods may have led to a desire for separation in landscapes that led to the cultivation of vegetable gardens. The appeal for such separation might then be extended to make other types of gardens seem aesthetically pleasing, like rose (Rosa) gardens or even poison gardens (i.e., gardens containing only poisonous plants).

Researchers have documented a wide array of similarities in preferences for landscapes that suggest an innate yearning to garden. For example, when describing the type of art people prefer, it tends to include blue skies and a mixture of climbable trees and savannahs/prairies. An evolutionary explanation for this is the desire for “prospect and refuge,” where there is enough visibility to scout for predators and prey, but also enough cover to escape from predators (Dutton, 2009). We like such scenes in paintings, and we like them in our yards. Just as our craving for salt can be explained by its necessity for biological functioning and its rarity in nature, and just as that evolutionary pressure is manifest in our diets despite today’s ample salt supplies, our positive emotional response to certain landscapes is a logical explanation for the pictures we hang on our walls and the way we landscape our yards.

There is indeed something about gardening that appeals to human biological functions, suggesting the desire is innate—so much so that it is a successful treatment for mental health issues (Clatworthy et al., 2013). However, it is unclear exactly which aspects of gardens improve biological functioning: the exercise, interaction with plants, fresh air, or all of the above? Gardeners do often enjoy their encounter with nature (Kaplan, 1973), and encounters with nature have restorative properties that reduce stress and improve mood (Korpela et al., 2008). It is also a legitimate form of exercise, leading to improvements in both physiology and psychology (Wang and MacMillan, 2012). This, of course, does not prove the link between evolution and the love for gardening, but it suggests an atavistic relationship that points toward evolution.

Explaining the desire for gardens as a product of evolution might technically be true, but then any biologically normal behavior [normal as defined by Wachbroit (1994)] can be explained by evolutionary pressure. Some behaviors are obviously a manifestation of evolution, but other behaviors, such as our love of music, are more of a by-product of other evolutionary pressures, in that music did not evolve with the objective of causing us pleasure, but for some other reason, such as facilitating group cohesion or enhancing communication, both of which can increase a group’s relative acquisition of resources (Malloch and Trevarthen, 2010).

This article first paid homage to the evolutionary foundations of garden motivations as they fulfill Scruton’s first component of cognitive duality—namely, our understanding of the world as a manifestation of the natural laws that govern it. This homage was brief, though, as however true the evolutionary explanation may be, it does not describe the meaning of gardens as humans perceive it.

The philosophical approach

To the extent that gardens serve as aesthetic pleasures, the philosophical approach to why we garden might be the most useful. Gardens have been a focus of philosophical ruminations for centuries, as shown in the following sections, where writings from 1790 to 2008 are discussed.

Art or hobby?

Most thought on why we garden treats the garden as a work of art, but many would consider it more of a hobby. Although art can, of course, be a hobby, the two words cast gardening in a different light. As art, it is a serious intellectual endeavor in pursuit of the profound. Referring to something as a hobby suggests it is merely a pleasant way to pass the time. Does our answer to why we garden change if it is considered a hobby?

Referring to something as a hobby seems to trivialize it; after all, the word hobby comes from the analogy of riding a hobby horse (Olmsted, 1993). Scholars of hobbies do depict it as something akin to play, but they do not consider this “play” trivial. In fact, they link it to some of the philosophical insights previously mentioned when considering the garden as a work of art.

Rachel Maines (2009) notes that hobbies are unique in that it is the process of producing the object, not the object itself, that provides the most value. There is some truth to this, but it understates the significance of the objects produced by hobbies. Heidegger (1962) points out that tools used in work are not the salient item of focus. A carpenter rarely thinks about the attributes of her hammer. She just uses it. But, if she is building furniture as a hobby, the objects produced are indeed valued and are contemplated for their specialness. The Adirondack chairs she builds are admired for their own sake in a personal way, whereas a professional furniture maker sees the chairs largely as a means to acquire money. It is thus more accurate to say that hobbies provide value for the process of producing the objects as well as the objects themselves, but the objects are valued for their intrinsic qualities, and not just the extrinsic value placed on them by other people.

The activities involved in gardening and other hobbies have characteristics of “play” (Eberle, 2014), in that they contain anticipation, surprise, pleasure, understanding, strength, and poise. Maines (2009) rightly observes that gardening also resembles Geertz’s (1973) anthropological concept of “deep play.” The term deep play originates with Jeremy Bentham (1780), who described it as a form of play that is (ostensibly) irrational in terms of the monetary benefits and costs. Gardening can be seen as irrational in one sense, in that it is performed not exclusively for the goods it produces. Why raise sweet corn (Z. mays) when it can be cheaper and of higher quality in the grocery store? The answer is that it is really done for an alternative reason, something … deeper. Maines (2009) notes that the motivation for hobbies involves both pleasure and the productive virtue it signifies. Gardening and recreational drug use may provide pleasure, but the former is associated with virtuous people whereas the latter is not. This echoes Cooper’s assertion that gardening is partly a component of living “the good life.” It may be “play,” yes, but not trivial play; it is deep play, where the deepness reflects its sacred qualities articulated by Heidegger (Ackerman, 1999).

Historian Steven Gelber (1999) describes hobbies, whether they be gardening, fishing, or stamp collecting, as activities that received social approval beginning around 1880. Humans have always had interests they explored for fun, but it is around this period that hobbies as we think of them today became part of living the good life. As industrialization split ordinary life into work and leisure, a threat loomed—that in leisure, “idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” With increasing amounts of leisure loomed a threat of hedonistic sin, and so hobbies became a way to derive pleasure from socially admirable activities. Gelber (1999) describes hobbies as disguised affirmation in that they reaffirm the value of being productive, but do so in the context of leisure. When given time off from productive work, virtuous people would then engage in some other productive endeavor that fulfills personal aspirations the workplace does not. They are still working—no idle hands here—but they are working for their own personal goals.

When writing about hobbies, both Maines (2009) and Gelber (1999) list gardening as one of the most popular, and their explanation of hobbies as a reflection of deeply held values testifies that we should not dismiss gardening as a trivial way to expend leisure, but a manifestation of the terminal values espoused by psychologists. Maines (2009) further notes the long history of gardening as a hobby, providing statistics on the rise in garden supply retail stores during the past century, as well as the many publications dedicated to gardening (1255 titles between 1500 and 1800). So even when referring to gardening as a hobby, researchers link the activity to virtue—the good life—and contend this link is not new.

Gardens and the good life

Nothing mentioned in this article about why we garden should be a surprise to the reader. How could it? The reader is also a human with hobbies and an appreciation for the arts, so if the explanations did not resonate they surely could not be accurate. Why, then, seek an answer at all? Because the desire for gardening is a large driver of the horticultural industry, and because it is an important part of many people’s lives. Not to contemplate continually the reason why an industry exists would seem odd.

Consider two quotations that do not refer explicitly to gardening, but reflect the general spirit of why we garden: Willa Cather’s, “that is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great” (Cather, 1918, p. 20) and Thomas Tracy Clark’s, “Everyone should have three hobbies: a physical hobby, an intellectual hobby, and a spiritual hobby,” (M.R., 1905, p. 1). Cather refers to our deepest personal desires—happiness and meaning—and Clark refers to what one should do to live the good life.

Cather (1918) posits happiness as something everyone wishes to acquire, and then describes a general strategy for achieving it. The word dissolves suggests the individual and their daily worldly concerns fade into the background. This is how Kant, Schopenhauer, and Scruton describe the appeal of art. The notion of being connected with something “complete and great” reflects much of Heidegger’s philosophy of art, where the temporal greets the sacred. It also testifies to Kant’s desire for transcendence through art and Schopenhauer’s contemplation of platonic forms.

Clark’s quotation (M.R., 1905) provides practical direction on how to achieve this happiness through hobbies, and it is important to note that gardening is simultaneously a physical, spiritual, and intellectual hobby, allowing one to accomplish the three objectives simultaneously. No wonder gardening is so popular. If a person considered gardening a waste of time, other people would question that person’s outlook on life. Clark’s advice was not offered as a way of achieving a short-term hedonistic happiness, but a long-term flourishing of the self. He is pointing the way to the good life, addressing the perennial question that began with Plato and continues to be asked today. The spiritual aspect of gardening reflects Cather’s reach for completeness and greatness. The physical aspect tends to the bodily needs of exercise and fresh air, providing physiological benefits that reach back to the evolutionary origins of our love of gardening.

Is it also an intellectual hobby? Any gardener will point to the intellectual challenges of gardening, the learning required to garden successfully, and the continual learning that gardening provides. Gardening is a challenge for both the amateur and the professional. Mother Nature never ceases presenting obstacles, from variable weather to pernicious pests. One cannot be a successful gardener without continually learning new things, and that too is part of the good life: always asking questions, finding answers, developing new questions, and never achieving perfection, but pursuing it anyway.

Horticulture: a unique field

The previous sections have explored a wide variety of sources concerning why we garden, concluding that gardening helps us acquire basic physiological needs such as food and exercise, but also provides us with “higher” needs, such as intellectual stimulation and aesthetic experiences. Gardening is, hence, a laudable activity, one supported by the scientific field of horticulture, which concerns how we garden, and the horticultural industry, which sells us goods and services to help us garden. The question of why we garden can then be used to explain why horticultural academic departments and the horticultural industry exist, and this “why” is articulated next using the concepts of hierarchical value maps and Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Agribusiness researchers often use a tool called means–end chain analysis to study consumer preferences for goods (Kambua et al., 2006; Makatouni, 2002). This is an interview technique during which consumers are first asked about the attributes they seek in a good and are then queried about why those attributes are valued. Just as psychologists are depicted as repeatedly asking, “And how does that make you feel?” means–end chain analysis repeatedly involves the question “And why is that important to you”? The end goal of the analysis is a hierarchical value map showing the 1) attributes of the good, 2) the consequences of those attributes, and 3) the terminal values that give those attributes meaning. The map always flows upward, with attributes at the bottom, consequences in the middle, and terminal values at the top, signifying the ultimate motivations driving consumer purchases. Arrows point from the attributes to their consequences, from one consequence to another consequence, and finally from consequences to terminal values. Although used primarily for consumer goods, these maps can be used in other applications, such as the question of what makes a great teacher (Wilson et al., 2010).

The concept of a hierarchical value map could be used to understand why various departments in an agricultural college exist. This would involve articulating the kinds of knowledge a department nurtures (attributes), the uses of the knowledge (consequences), and the terminal values giving those consequences meaning. For most departments, there will be a long line of consequences between the attributes and the terminal values. Agronomy is studied to better produce food and fiber inputs, which are inputs into a long supply chain before the final product is consumed. That consumption is undertaken partly for its own sake, but also for the physiological health needed to accomplish more important things in life. Agribusiness is studied to help people manage profitable businesses, with those profits desired not for the intrinsic value of the cotton and linen the dollar bills are made of, but for the goods and services they can purchase. These goods and services (and most agricultural departments) are important but instrumental in that their value resides in their ability to produce other outcomes, and less for their own sake. The attributes of the knowledge and the terminal values that provide them meaning are mediated by a long list of consequences.

Horticulture is unique in that the part concerning how to garden is valued almost for its own sake. The attributes and knowledge are mediated by one consequence: a plant. The knowledge of how to raise roses is valued by the gardener for the roses themselves. The rose itself provides terminal values such as a world of beauty. The hobby gardener enjoys the sweat and the dirt because the act of gardening is valued for itself, providing terminal values such as self-respect and inner harmony. This article has also argued that gardening is part of living the good life, something Socrates taught us is worth drinking hemlock for—a terminal value if there ever was one.

For a more familiar model of human motivations, consider Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Figure 1 shows a more elaborate hierarchy than the one most are accustomed to seeing, the one Maslow specified later in his career and the one that better reflects modern psychology (Kaufman, 2018). These needs are listed as a hierarchy in the sense that humans typically first seek needs in the lower part of the triangle before reaching for the higher parts. A person starving without shelter will not be very concerned with having aesthetic experiences or seeking transcendence, but one with plentiful food and shelter will not be satisfied with that alone. A full life occurs when one experiences all components of the hierarchy. Most of agriculture—including parts of horticulture—is aimed at the physiological needs: food and fiber. Though a life acquiring only these needs is far from ideal, without these needs the others cannot be acquired.

Horticulture goes a step further by also helping people acquire the higher needs. Maintaining an attractive lawn allows one to obtain esteem, both by oneself and others. Gardening is a hobby anyone can undertake, but also allows ever-increasing challenges, allowing people to obtain their cognitive needs. It is obvious that gardens provide aesthetic experiences. Gardening as a hobby and as part of the good life also facilitates self-actualization. Finally, there is transcendence. This article has gone to considerable lengths to articulate the many philosophical writings arguing how gardens provide such transcendence. In Kant and Schopenhauer, this transcendence is described as a connection to platonic forms. Cooper adopts the poetic philosophy of Heidegger to describe the garden’s unveiling of truth and connection to mystery. The garden is of this world in that it is driven by biological forces and provides important physiological needs, but also takes us “out of this world” in ways akin to poetry, spirituality—things difficult for a normal person to put into words. People of a specific genius have been able to translate these experiences into words though, and in the process, the garden has served as a muse to some of the greatest writers.

Damon Young (2020), in Philosophy in the Garden, describes the intimate relationship between gardens and literary masters such as Jane Austen, Marcel Proust, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, François-Marie Arouet (better known as Voltaire), and Jean-Paul Sartre. In these stories about the relationship between great thinkers and the garden, Young provides eloquent and convincing arguments that the garden is one of the few things able to help humans obtain every level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs simultaneously. It both provides us with the physiological needs to live in this world and the transcendent needs to see above this world, and in the process become a complete person. What Young praises of the garden can be said for horticulture, and one can see this in the everyday life in an agricultural college. Not being a member of a horticulture department, I probably pay more attention to their differences than most of its faculty members, and this is what I see. I see a department of plant scientists that is often joined with landscape architecture, a field with journals that do include discussions of aesthetics (van Etteger et al., 2016; van Zyl and van Etteger, 2021). The instructor of our Introduction to Horticulture class not only teaches properties of plant growth, but also has his students create artwork from plant seeds, and these works grace the halls of the teaching greenhouse. In this one department, you have both art and science.

What can be said of a department of horticulture can be said of the industry it serves—an industry that generates more than $14 billion in plant sales in the United States (HortiDaily, 2020), $21 billion in purchases of garden and lawn care services, and $19 billion in purchases of lawn and garden supplies (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021). Although the businesses themselves may exist mostly to generate profits, their consumers are buying flowers, vines, and seeds to become Maslow’s complete person. This does not make the horticultural industry better than an industry that seeks only to provide the physiological needs of food and fiber, but it does make it qualitatively different. This difference is often overlooked by my horticultural friends, and the purpose of this article is to remind them of the important role they play in human flourishing.