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Plants, Places & People
Natural places have always had a strong emotional impact on people. We have never quite separated ourselves from the natural world despite the degree to which we have manipulated it.
We keep returning to the aesthetic pleasures of natural places. A garden is a contrived representation of what we find most pleasing about nature. Certain aspects of it we find more pleasing than others. A certain balance of space and vegetation is important to us, along with harmonious colours and fragrant scents.
It has been suggested that this appreciation relates to our long history as hunter-gatherers in the savannahs of Africa where humanity evolved.
The notion of the mythical Arcadia tries to recapture that sort of natural paradise where we have that easy harmony with the landscape. The romantic myth comes from an actual part of Greece, which was considered to be the home of a number of the ancient Greek gods, particularly Pan the god of nature. Renaissance poets who portrayed Arcadia as an idyllic paradise further embellished its reputation.
Utopian paradises like Arcadia, Eden or Shangri-La capture our imaginations and inspire us to create our own bit of domestic paradise as sanctuary from the stresses of our lives
Gary Shadforth - Arcadia Sustainable Design - 0431 022 953
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