The Well Gardened Mind

The physician and writer, Oliver Sacks, explains the value of gardens:

“As a writer, I find gardens essential to the creative process; as a physician, I take my patients to gardens whenever possible. All of us have had the experience of wandering through a lush garden or a timeless desert, walking by a river or an ocean, or climbing a mountain and f... See more

Gardens are a mechanism by which we make life bearable. They protect us from the frenzy and tumult unleashed by history. They counter annihilating and anarchic forces. Gardens have been with us – or we have been with gardens – forever. Some say they emerged after agriculture. But if gardens are to agriculture what poetry is to prose, who knows, gar

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To garden is to care deeply, inclusively and audaciously for the world outside our homes and our heads. It’s a way of being that is intimately interwoven with the real truths of existence—not the things we’re told to value (money, status, ownership), but the things that actually matter (sustenance, perspective, beauty, connection, growth).