Historic Gardens – Patterns of Nature and Culture

Abstract

Historically, the way Landscape and the gardens were treated, depended upon the attitude and view of the people towards nature. Landscape and gardens have been viewed and designed differently in the Eastern and Western cultures. Nature can be dominated and controlled and made to serve humans is the view generally attributed to the west. Harmony and co-existence with nature and the action taken not to radically change nature but to live along side it, is the view prevalent in the East. Reverence or respect for nature is the view in which nature is seen to be endowed with extraordinary powers. Indian gardens are more closely aligned to the later view. Landscape or gardens as symbolic spaces can represent culturally constructed desired or imagined scenario representing success, power or subjugation.