In the Shadow of Nightmares

Gardens, like all works of art, aren't created in a vacuum. Works of art always reflect the society that they were created in. On August 6, 1945, the human race went through an abrupt transformation when the United States of America dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Humans have known for thousands of years that the civilizations that they create can be destroyed, but on August 6, 1945, the human race learned that it had the power to destroy itself.

I was born in 1953; I am very interested in history and I have an active imagination, but I often find it difficult to imagine what life was like before the bomb. My generation grew up accepting a nightmare, and they accepted it on a deep level; I am not sure that we really understand the huge mental gap that there must be between people who were born in 1930 and people who were born in 1946. People who were born in 1930 spent their childhood during the Great Depression and they were only fifteen years old when World War II ended; it was hardly the best time to be a child, but they could always believe in the future - even the children in Nazi death camps could believe that the insanity would eventually end and the human race would survive. I have never really believed in such a future. I have always believed that the human race will eventually destroy itself; I just hope that it won't happen until after I die a peaceful death.

Children born after August 6, 1945 have grown up in a world where the future is just a hope - nothing more. There are obvious signs of a deep insecurity in almost every aspect of modern society, but I can't really see it in gardens. I would expect the change to show, because gardens take so long to mature - gardens are as much about the future as they are about the present.

Gardens created since World War II do reflect changes in the labor market; professional gardeners have been less available than they were before the war and the cost of their labor has gone up. It has often been said that elaborate estate gardens will never be created again, but that statement is based upon the assumption that wealth won't become concentrated in the hands of a few. The concentration of wealth has happened many times in the past and I expect that it will happen again - it may even be happening now, but the gardens of a new elite may be different from those of past centuries.

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic