Willow, Lake Constance

Formal gardens transform the earth into a system of social arrangement. Relaxed gardens, the English gardens of the 18th and 19th centuries and their heirs, recreate this social arrangement on the model of English country estates and a life of sophisticated culture built on the foundation of the physical world. The orchards of the Okanagan are one form of these gardens. The willow above, beside a lakeshore villa in Switzerland, is another. Both are beautiful. Both are artificial creations, serving  the purposes of human social hierarchies. This is the Western way of integrating the earth into human social spheres. Our next step is to integrate these understandings into indigenous understandings, not the other way around.