In the same way that the picturesque designers were always careful to include some reminder of our mortality in their gardens -- a ruin, sometimes even a dead tree -- the act of leaving parts of the garden untended, and calling attention to its margins, seems to undermine any pretense to perfect power or wisdom on the part of the gardener. The margins of our gardens can be tropes too, but figures of irony rather than transcendence -- antidotes, in fact, to our hubris. It may be in the margins of our gardens that we can discover fresh ways to bring our aesthetics and our ethics about the land into some meaningful alignment. Michael Pollan
About This Quote

To me it is very important to have something at the edges of our gardens, something that can remind us of death, which reminds us of the mortality of the garden. This is why I love to have a ruin or a dead tree at the edge of my garden so that I am not so proud about my garden. It also reminds me that I have all this beautiful garden without any care for it. When I put my garden in front of the house, notice it is not perfect, but just like nature I can’t control everything.

Source: Second Nature: A Gardeners Education

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