Garden Practices, "Quiet" Virtues, and Understanding

In both Western and Asian traditions, moral purposes have been assigned to gardening and related practices. The focus in this paper is upon virtues that gardening practices may manifest and foster. A distinction is made between virtues incidental to gardening, and those internal or essential to it. The latter — including humility and care — are virtues required for gardens to flourish. These internal virtues are referred to as "quiet" ones, for they are virtues associated by the Ancients with such ideals of tranquillity as ataraxia, equanimity and wu-wei. Attention to these quiet virtues, it is argued, explains why gardens have been regarded both as places of refuge and ones conducive to wisdom. The question is addressed, finally, of why the garden is an especially apt arena for the cultivation of certain virtues. The answer refers to the way that, in the garden, human practices and natural processes inflect and permeate one another. Humility, for example, is fostered by recognizing one's dependence upon nature and the limits of imposing human schemes upon it.