It is still too cold to set out anything in the garden here where I live near Denver. On cold days, I spent some time in the garden of words, the Oxford English Dictionary. The book A Child’s Garden of Verses reminds me that “garden” is a collection of things even words. In ancient times especially in the warm Middle East, a garden was a place of pleasure and peace. In the Hebrew Bible there was in Genesis the Gan Eden, a place of beginnings and of peace and delight. In English, the 16th century Coverdale Bible has this phrase: “The Lorde God also planted a garden of pleasure in Eden [gardē in text].”
The word “garden” as we use it now primarily for a place for plants and trees comes into Middle English from the Old French jardin which is the same in Modern French. But there was a Germanic word for a garden as an enclosed space which was geard in Old English. In Old Frisian, which was the father tongue of Old English, the word was garda and in Gothic it was gards. Old English geard, an enclosure became our modern yard. One of my favorite words from Old English is middangeard that is, “middle-earth” which meant simply the earth or the world. It must have been a favorite of Tolkien as well. No one knows why “middle”, but some assume it meant that we all (including Hobbits) live between the heavens and the underworld.
So from biblical times a garden is a place of beauty and pleasure. Henry the Eighth referred to the city of Kent, England as “the Garden of England” apparently for its beautiful scenery. Shakespeare, in The Taming of the Shrew, refers to Lombardy as “The pleasant garden of great Italy.” New Jersey calls itself “the Garden State” but I imagine that anyone driving the New Jersey Turnpike wonders why. Near our home in Colorado is the Garden of the Gods, a remarkable landscape of unworldly rock formations sculpted out of sandstone during eons of geological upheavals and harsh weather. Colorado also has a Shakespeare Garden Festival in Boulder. The Shakespeare Garden features plants mentioned in the Bard’s plays and poems. There are dozens of Shakespeare Gardens in the English speaking world as well as books devoted to the delightful references to gardens in the works of Shakespeare.
There seems to be a positive connation to almost any use of the word “garden”. On the other hand, there is phrase “wicked garden” a most certainly misogynist reference to female sexuality. The OED does document the slang use of the “garden” as metaphor for the lady parts. I never knew that, but what teenage boy hasn’t heard of the same as a “bush” and I suppose that is close enough. With a more obvious meaning, there is also the “lady garden.” The OED notes the first use of “garden” in this way was in a 1640 line written by the Elizabethan poet Thomas Carew in a particularly indecent love poem. Another poet in 1941, long before he could avail himself of Viagra, wrote “I’ve been sadly let down By the tool of a fool in a garden.” And then there is the Garden of Earthly Delights, a triptych by Hieronymus Bosch. In Bosch fashion, this painting displays a bizarre collection of fantastical creatures, biblical and animal and imaginary. And humans, all naked as jays, seeking pleasure.
The biblical garden at the beginning of all earthly things was supposed to be a literal place of verdant growth, flowers, trees and at least one fruit. Ever since, the garden has served in all manner of figurative senses. An early figurative garden was a 14th century reference to the “gardin of þe herte”. There is also a garden of the soul and a garden of the mind. For Shakespeare, our bodies are gardens and our wills are the gardeners. Plato taught in a garden named for a Greek hero Akademos, and now that garden is in English the “Academy.” Epicurus also taught in a garden and sometimes Epicuren philosophy is called, simply, “the Garden.”
Sometimes a baseball field is called a garden. In fact, early baseball might have been played in an apple orchard, and sportswriters who are forever seeking synonyms may refer to a baseball diamond as an apple garden or apple orchard. Sports arenas and events locations of all kinds are called (capitalized) Gardens and Madison Square Garden is not the only one, London has one too. Also Michigan and Las Vegas have events locations called a Garden.
To artfully deceive is “leading one up the garden path.” One of my favorite quotes is the concluding remarks in Voltaire’s Candide: “All that is very well, answered Candid, but let us take care of our garden.” After all the calamities of the world, it is best to care for the simple things, the living things that are closest to us and closest to the earth itself. The OED writes that the Candide quote is the source of the phrase “to cultivate one’s one garden” that is, to attend to your own affairs.
So I will. In the cold weather I have set up some shelves with grow lamps and started flower and herb seeds called “gardening under lights.” After the date of the average last frost for Denver, I’ll set out my little ones. In the garden.
Two Strikes 