Brookside Gardens is located within the Wheaton Regional Park, Maryland. The gardens first opened to the public in 1969, with outdoor space featuring a conservatory and fifteen different styles of gardens. (1)

As we are continuing to social distance, the ample 50 acres open space of Brookside Gardens would be a great option for us to hangout. Moreover, science literature and studies have already proven that our attention and mental fatigue can be restored by accessing aesthetically pleasing natural environments. (2) We all agree to the benefits. But have you ever wondered how we develop this standard of beauty, since everyone has their own taste?

The Etymology of Garden

The word garden contains the meaning of “enclosure”, such as in the Middle English “gardin” or in old French “jardin”. So contrary to the untouched, natural landscape, the word has the connotation of a landscape being confined in certain area (and order) - It is artificial, manmade nature.

Garden as a setting for social or solitary human life

From the myth of Adam and Eve in the garden to Henry Thoreau ‘s reflection at Walden, human beings were doing all kinds of activities within this planned nature: food production, cultivation, observation, relaxation or retreating. Our aesthetic expression towards gardens responds to how we (socially) view ourselves compared to nature.

Manmade beauty

Like farming (penning animals in a confined area), a garden resembles how humans dominate nature through a perceivable boundary. Therefore, gardens are an aesthetic expression of (owner’s idea in) beauty through the form of art and vegetation. This idea of “manmade nature” influences how people created gardens. In imitation of Versailles which emphasize axis, geometric patterns, and ornaments; gardens were designed to be seen from a distance.

Sublime

Through the popularity of traveling, people started to have different perspectives towards beauty. In 1699 Joseph Addison first commented on “Sublime in external Nature” to express beauty as unbounded, unlimited, and greatness. Later in 1757, Edmund Burke developed the concept of dual emotion of both fear and attraction while he enjoyed the vastness and obscurity of landscape through his expeditions.(3) This idea of sublimity is contrary to classic concept of beauty as pure pleasure and perfect harmony.

Picturesque

The genre “picturesque” appeared in the 17th century and blossomed in the 18th. In William Gilpin’s An Essay on Prints, he defined picturesque as “a term expressive of that particular kind of beauty, which is agreeable in a picture.” Later in 1927, Christopher Hussey developed the triple definition for picturesque beauty: first as harmonic and classic (beauty), second as grandiose and terrifying (sublime), and third, the rustic, as the combination of the two.(4) This new interpretation of beauty became the concept of the epoch.

Serendipity across East and West

In Brookside Gardens, you can also see the Japanese Tea House and Reflection Terrace as the park’s oriental features.

Starting with Sir William Temple’s essay Upon the Garden of Epicurus, and the reports from Jesuit missionary in China, Father Attiret, the word “sharawadgi” was first introduced to the West.(5) Sharawadgi was depicted as a style that contrasts to the straight lines, regularity, and symmetry. Sir Temple misread this “sharawadgi”, a scattered irregularity character, to be a happy coincidence instead of carefully manipulated “view-framing” (zao jing) landscape designs, which are common in eastern gardens.

Now, can you tell more about our history of beauty the next time you stroll around Brookside Gardens?

Notes and References:

1.Here is the list of these fifteen different gardens:

List of gardens in brookside 2020-09-24 132654.png

2. See “This is” science studies regarding relationship of human health wellbeing and aesthetics experience in nature.

3.This idea of dual emotion appeared in Burke’s publishing “A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beauty”: “Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort of terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the Sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable feeling.”

4. The concept of triple definition first appeared from “the Picturesque: Studies in a Point of View”, Christopher Hussey, 1927.

5.Sir.Temple might have picked up the Japanese シャラワジ which pronounces “sharawadgi”.

6. Visit Brookside Gardens Map tour here.

7. History of Beauty, Umberto Eco, 2004 by Rizzoli.

Here are some of my picks from the last visit to Brookside Gardens.

If you ever go Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, visit this stone and carefully observe its features, you might find out there are two and three tiny pillars that sit quietly by this giant engraved stone. (at the middle of photo). On the stone, it says “the senseless violence of two men caused the deaths of thirteen innocent people”. I am not sure if my interpretation of these two and three pillars was correct. But, perhaps, the two senseless men and thirteen innocents all need to be #memorialized. So that, while we are celebrating or mourning for our history, we don’t make the same mistakes again.

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