Gardens Grown Wild: In-Between Topography and Its Mythology

This chapter uses the construct of the garden to explore the correspondences between physical topography and its mythology, reality and its transcription, in contained and uncontained landscapes. The text analyzes the articulate assemblage of the ancient landscape in the Bay of Naples stretching from the urban spaces and art apparatuses of the city of Pompeii, across the semi-wild terrains of the shore beyond its walls, and out into the atmosphere above the waters. Elaborating further, the text also articulates the reciprocal reflection of man-made and natural wefts and the confluence of history and autobiography in an atmospheric time proper of the Pompeian landscape. The text, then, discusses two alternative ideas of garden, the nature garden and the people’s garden, corresponding to a shift in ethos and two opposite ways of regarding nature in more general terms. The latter corresponds to man regarding nature as a provision of natural services, the former to considering man as an observer immersed in the natural ecosystem. The text, then, interprets the historical transition converting the hunting parks into metropolitan parks in the European capitals, going from game hunting to service providing, as a consolidation of the feudal structure of thought into the modernity. In conclusion, ethical alternatives to the unsustainable exploitation of natural services can replace the understanding of the world’s relational dynamics for the careless action of consumption of its resources.