"Garden" is one of those words that evokes images in all of us. There is the image of garden-present - the one we have now; images of garden-future - the one we hope to have - and of course images of last week, last spring, the year we began to plant, the year the deer ate everything. All of these are, in a sense, gardens of the mind.
But I'm talking about another kind of garden here - a more personal one, which may not exist anywhere on earth but in your imagination. I'm speaking of the ideal that the word garden evokes in you.
It is a fleeting thing, this idea garden, all too quickly replaced by the gardens of reality. The mind-garden is one which may be made up of memories of your grandmother's garden, or a park you played in as a child; it may be partly the mental image you had when you first tried to imagine the garden of Eden. It could be a mental picture of gardens you read about it children's books, overlaid by gardens you have read and dreamt about as an adult. It may have very few specific plants in it, because it is an ideal, a mood, a feeling, rather than a place. The garden in your mind is your own conception of Paradise.
Paradise, after all, was the first garden, a place where there were no cares and life had the potential to go on forever in complete happiness. Paradise functions as an archetype for us, with a universal meaning - a garden of happiness and contentment.
The differences in our mind-gardens lie in what makes us happy or content. For some it is a feeling of coziness; others require grandeur; still others find their ease in a garden that will fill the larders for winter. Some people are happy sitting amidst a stimulating riot of color, while others find peace in a glade of tranquil green.
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