Welcome to Litsy!

This was a lovely little book about how gardens (both real and those depicted in art) shape one's life. I have about a quarter acre of land that is an absolute mess right now, and it was nice to read stories about people with beautiful gardens who also struggled to find their green thumb. I made pinterest boards and added lots of suggestions to my TBR that I can refer back to as I begin my work this spring!

I picked this book up at the library sale this morning. I've been hoping to find some inspiration to get started on my yard this year. 🌸☀️

Nonbinary British writer Olivia Laing‘s experience of renovating a garden in Suffolk is entwined with an exploration of the role of gardens in history & in particular their connection with sociopolitical issues. The role of gardens in the lives of queer folk during a time when it wasn‘t good to be gay, the therapeutic effect of gardens to this day, the lush botanical language: there‘s so much that I love about this book! #LGBTQ

Sameness was anathema to William Morris. What he liked was individuality amidst common purpose, each person as distinctive as flowers in a meadow.

The study of botany was an exercise in looking. It made the ordinary world more intricate and finely detailed, as if I had acquired a magnifying glass that trebled the eye‘s capacity.

There‘s no point looking for Eden on a map. It‘s a dream that is carried in the heart: a fertile garden, time and space enough for all of us.

Morris thought everyone‘s environment could be & should be more beautiful. He believed it was people‘s right to live in beautiful, unspoilt, unpolluted places & he thought, like Ruskin, that beauty was not a luxury & that luxurious & unnecessary things were actually unbeautiful, since beauty was so closely aligned to necessity & nature.

What makes a garden such an important constituent of a utopia? It is neither a farm nor a wilderness, though it can push up hard against either of these extremes. This means it betokens more than just utility, encompassing beauty, pleasure & delight, while remaining emphatically a site of labour as well as leisure, a place to please puritans & sybarites alike.

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But Eden also served as a justification, a God-given excuse note for the brutal work. In the seventeenth century, arguments for colonial expansion regularly drew on Genesis, and God's injunction to man to subdue and have dominion over all creation; an attitude, I might add, that is directly responsible for the perilous state of our planet now.

4 ⭐ This is a wonderful look. It‘s about various types of plants and a little girl who receives new ones frequently. The rhyme that tells the story is well done and perfect for the audience. The little plant tags with the types of plants are a genius idea that goes perfect with the story.