ABSTRACT
This book began in a garden. That garden was, like many others, a site hospitable to experiences of the kinds I have been discussing over the last three chapters. It was a garden where animals were seen, music was heard, and paths were walked. But over the pages that follow, my concern is not primarily with gardens as places to stroll through or sit in, or as creations to be admired or criticized. It is, rather, with the practice of gardening – of making, modifying, stocking and tending gardens. It is a practice, I’ll be proposing, that may and should inspire a sense of mystery.
