EGMT 1540: Why Garden?

Gardens can be extraordinary places of mystery, beauty, and wonder, places where we witness the miraculous unfolding of seed to sprout to flower to fruit. But they are also important places where we encounter the ordinary living world intimately and directly, often with a self-conscious recognition of being in nature. How might those familiar moments of contact and heightened environmental sensibility teach us to know and respond more openly, complexly, and responsibly to nature? And what lessons are there in the practice of gardening that might help us make ethical socio-environmental choices? Using the gardens of UVa as a living classroom, we’ll spend much time exploring those spaces and getting to know their inhabitants and the web of relations there. We’ll go gardening using our many senses, but we’ll also employ sensing tools to bring sharper focus to the vibrant living world around us. We’ll read and write about gardens to make better sense of our experiences of and relations to nature. Ultimately, we’ll reckon with how such engagement with gardens calls us to flourish as we support the flourishing of others.