Mas de Rousselonge

Press : Louisa & Rousselonge

CONFERENCE

Youtube Mediterranean Garden Society Video Channel | october 12 2022 

BOOKS

For titles in French, click here

Back Cover Text

Everywhere today, our species questions its roles and responsibilities to the planet and the life it contains. Rewilding, like conservation, concerns forests, rivers, vast territories—rarely gardens. Traditionally, gardens are merely domestic, if occasionally supportive of “wild” life. But if humans are as “natural” as bees or bears, what might that change in how we garden? Especially when we realize that our gardens cover far more territory than officially protected nature areas. Why are gardens neglected in efforts to regenerate the very conditions of life? And how can gardeners, singly and together, keep life flourishing? Our own included.

Louisa Jones offers historical, philosophical and practical perspectives. First a quick overview of the Western heritage of the “wild” in its sometimes surprising relationship to gardens: from the paleolithic to the pastoral, from American wilderness and “English” horticulture to the new land art. For active gardeners, she assembles a rich weaving of testimonials, anecdotes, and practical advice collected from specialists around the world. Garden wilding means first of all learning to observe and respect existing ecosystems, making our interdependence with other species mutually beneficial. We no longer dominate, we participate. As gardeners, we can enrich a shared living space in a daily experience of wonder and discovery, where beauty, pleasure, and productivity intermingle. Collectively, garden wilding expands towards the forest-gardening of permaculture, garden farms, and other experimental hybrids. It reconnects with family farming by its diversity and resilience and especially with the Mediterranean example, where human activity over millennia has enriched much more than it destroyed. And in our precarious, disturbed and damaged world, it links gardens to the mosaics, patches and clearings praised by many ecologists, where we must invent new ways of cohabiting. Human intervention in the fabric of life is not always destructive, and garden wilding lets us prove this every day, in the most immediate and personal way possible.

Of Canadian origin, Louisa Jones is the author of numerous books on contemporary French gardens, especially Mediterranean. She herself has lived and gardened in the South of France since 1975.