Roberto Burle Marx Lectures: Landscape as Art and Urbanism

FROM THE BOOK

Excerpt from “The Garden
as a Form of Art ” by Roberto Burle Marx

The planned garden seems to have existed as long as written history; it is one of the oldest forms of art. In literature and mythology, it appears early as a conception of the ideal, as a dwelling place
for gods—the Garden of Eden, the Garden of the Hesperides, the Garden of Allah.

We do not learn very much in detail about these gardens; it would be quite impossible to reconstruct the Garden of Eden from any specifications that occur in Genesis. But we can deduce, rather than discover, what they were supposed to be like; and they appear to
have had one element in common. They are ordered reconstructions of nature herself, natural environments from which the element of
fear has been removed and which grow in a most perfect and agreeable way with the laboring assistance of man. Where they occur, the objects to be feared are animal, or reptilian, and this to me seems to show that the garden in its ideal conception is a place where man can demonstrate his control of nature—if you like, his friendship
for her—by acknowledging his dependence on her.

The garden is not simply a product of idle leisure, not merely
one more way in which a successful egotist can add to his self-esteem. It is not a thing to be considered last when the money for a project
has already been spent; not a magic blanket to be flung over bad proportions or conflicting masses or poorly planned volumes.
The garden is, it must be, an integral part of civilized life: a deeply felt, deeply rooted, spiritual, and emotional necessity.