Gardening and Garden History
Rory Stuart
What are Gardens For? Experiencing, Making and Thinking about Gardens
3:00pm | Sunday 16 September 2012Tickets: | Duration: | Venue: |
£N/A | 1 Hour | Blenheim Palace: The Indian Room |
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This was an Oxford Literary Festival 2012 Event.
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Garden designer Rory Stuart has written a book made for keen garden visitors. What are Gardens For? questions what we ask of gardens when we make them or visit them. And it wonders how we can get more from our gardening and garden visits. Stuart approaches the experience of being in a garden from many different angles, exploring how we can more fully understand the physical, psychological and spiritual pleasures gardens give us. He says gardens must be understood in the context of a culture and refers to music, literature and painting. And he finds interesting differences between the impact of Chinese culture on China’s gardens and the impact of western culture on gardens in the West.
Stuart worked as a teacher of English literature before inheriting a Cotswold cottage with a beautiful garden. He began to look at plants and gardens critically, training in garden design then setting himself up as a designer. He writes articles for many garden magazines and has led garden tours in France, India and Italy. His previous works include Gardens of the World.