I think I understand what you are saying: just how much can a person control or alter their surroundings before it is no longer considered natural or a condition that could have happened naturally? Possibly when one starts planting plants that would not normally occur in their location as they strive to bring their surroundings into order and neatness then you would have a controlled environment, which is a garden. But then you have the argument of degrees of change and whether or not this is a good thing or a bad thing. There are a lot of variables to consider.

Eddie:
Yes. You've put your pen right on the crux of the problem. The problem right now lies with "the degrees of change." But I think I see a light at the end of the [tree] tunnel.

The subject is vast John, and the possibilities endless. In a way, if you are writing fiction, I think both "natural landscape" and "garden" have to jump through the hoops you tell them to. When using these two words with a garden oriented audience the parameters are narrower but with a general audience anything goes. Presumably you are using the terms in opposition to one another so your question "at what point does" one become the other depends which you see as good and which bad.

Tony:
I agree, but what I'm working on is a smooth transition. Even fiction has to follow an internal logic to seem plausible to the reader. You have to not only capture the reader but convince her/him that the events you describe could have happened (or might) happen. This is turning into an interesting fictional [?] journey for me.

Another hurdle I have problems jumping across are "illogical" fictional gardening practices -- what I like to call the "Jack-and-the-Beanstalk" syndrome -- where someone pops a seed (or cutting) into the ground which sprouts immediately and grows into a huge plant. (In some California Indian myths trees grow huge when coyote urinates on them. But coyote is magic, not logical: when he sleeps with a woman, she gives birth to a child in the morning . . . . )

Several decades ago, I participated in a [very intense] grad school discussion about the internal logic of fiction. We afflicted each other with prose texts pulled from both fictional and non-fictional works and tried to decide, based on structure, the use of words, images, et al., whether or not a particular passage was fictional or not. That turned out to be much more difficult than we expected and some lively arguments ensued -- which, of course, were proved or refuted by bringing out the full text. It made me think, and still does. On a different level, cf., a recent spate of stories in the New York Times.)

That's a smooth transition alright John; from "A question" to "The Question".
I don't think for one minute that fiction needs to apply to a logic that is outside the significance an author gives it. This would make for very dull writing and rule out all science fiction writers and those writers like Gabrielle Garcia Marquez, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borge, Alejo Carpentier. J G Ballard etc.
Besides I am not sure what kind of 'logic' is afoot when a shrivelled bean grows magically into a plant with bright red flowers followed by more beans.

I guess I question man and his ideas and works but not Nature and her mysterious ways.

Why?

If I could answer that question. I'd write a book about it and become rich and famous.

But then you would have to mention me in the dedication think how painful that would be?

And why would that be painful? I see nothing wrong with giving credit -- where it's due.

Ouch! I felt that John.

A garden begins when the work of gardening becomes a labor of love not one of burden or necessity ....

One can sit in nature ... it is not a garden .... it is wild ... you are one of the many living things there and for most of us not our world at all a place we visit but could not stay in for too long ... a garden is a tamed place made for man ... the plants are captive like animals in a zoo ..... and suited for mans needs .... to create a perfect place ...

A farm could be a garden but it is worked for profit and becomes work ...

While a contractor I've often would take walks in nurserys and gardens and say ...ahh gardening is a great hobby BUT as a business it is a different beast all together .... not better or worse but different ....

Just some quick thoughts ... hope it adds to the soup.

Good Day ....

TMK:
Could you elaborate on why "plants are captive like animals in a zoo" and why a place that is "worked for profit and becomes work" ceases to be a garden?

I have known many gardeners who were able to get great pleasure from gardening while not neglecting the business aspect. But perhaps that takes a special kind of creativity which the "contractors" I have met seem to lack.

"Could you elaborate on why "plants are captive like animals in a zoo""

Plants have been able to move from one part of the globe to the other without the help of man. Indeed many plants can move about despite mans deliberate efforts to keep them in one place .. in fact a lion in the zoo would have less a chance to escape then some plants .... overtime many plants in cultivation have been changed from there wild relatives and made to depend on man through cultivation ... indeed mutants .... they can not move and survive in the wild without the aid of mankind ... some plants can indeed still leave cultivation ... sometimes ... for brief amounts of time a season or so and are refered to as "Escapees" in floras .... some do escape and become a stable part of the flora despite mans efforts to contain them and are refered to as "naturalized " in the area. The flora of places like Hawaii are 90 % non native plants ..... and someday the naitive flora may be gone due to plants leaving cultivation ....

"why a place that is "worked for profit and becomes work" ceases to be a garden? "

To be honest John this is a topic in of itself ..... I can only speak from my own experience .....

Can one make his pleasure / love his work and still love it in the end ??

... perhaps this is a sideline of confusion ....

The garden is worked or enjoyed for leisure is the point I was attempting to make ..... an activity of leisure ... a place of leisure ...even a symbol of leisure ... not survival where one makes it or perishes as it would of been when man first started to work the land ......

.... I enjoy working in my own garden more then a clients ... NOW don't everyone jump to the wrong idea ... I like "business" .. in and of itself ... and have had some great moments in gardens belonging to clients but when building a garden knowing that your IRS payment is due , the phone bill needs to be paid, your estimate allows only one day to finish the project .... well ..... it seems to take away something from the "gardening" for fun aspect. Right ??

Now a fellow like myself that works in a goverment type job can take more time to "smell the Roses" ... buttt ... I'd rather be a retired gardener in my own garden ....

The farm becomes a garden when your activities there are true leisure ........ if the bugs eat your lettuce .... oh well ..... we will have to go to the market ?? ... thats different then ... we can't eat tonight ...

This is the point nature becomes a garden ....

Good Day .... Great question !!

Now you've really confused me with all of those pregnant phrases. Is there something you've published that would elucidate the issue?

hmmm ..."pregnant" phrases .... My wife is pregnant ... I know what you mean.

First man uses plants to eat ... then to shelter himself.. tools ect .. then leisure mental and physical ... thats when the garden is born.... as most of us no it anyway.

Is that less pregnant ... John ?

No ... no publications .. like I said just quick thoughts to add to the soup .... before going back to work and paying the bills.... a good botany book will deal with cultivated vs. Native vs Naturalized plants.

Good Day ....

"But my question is, at what point does the "natural" landscape become a garden -- if it does at all. "

Perhaps when there is know "natural"landscape left except that created by man .....

Good Day ....

So you're not actually a writer?

TMK is trying to get something out into the public arena by writing his thoughts down John, I would have thought that makes him a writer. In many ways it makes his contribution more immediate than a book you might write now that is published next year.

Sorry, but he confused me.

Ohhh now that you ask .... I consider myself a landscape manager / part time scientist if I ever get the garage converted to a lab ... somewhat of a photographer ....

Have been considering writing ... that is why I lurk around here .... would like to write about the technical stuff scientist publish that for the most part collect dust in library basemants ... by making this info understandable and reveal the excitement of it all ....

Do you think there is a market for that kind of material John ??

Good Day .....

There is -- if you have a PhD in the field you're specializing in. (No, this does nor mean that having a PhD makes you smarter or more knowledgeable -- it's just something he establishment seems to require when you want to talk about "science.")

I would applaud more science in garden writing.
Where is a really good read on Disease suppressive compost?
Have you read Ronald Lanner's 'Made For Each Other'A symbiosis of birds and pines?

Humans in a landscape does not immediately make a garden.
We forage for food as the birds and other creatures. We must raise our young.
But when the intellect begins to play...to create with affection or desire, a garden is born.

John,
First of all, I agree with your feelings about the horticulturally impossible happenings in some books... our hero is hiking in Montana in March, for example, and picks wild raspberries when he gets hungry. Drives me wild.

For me, a garden is different from the natural landscape because people clean up and rearrange. In the wild, dead plant matter falls and rots where it falls. Gardeners remove this (although they may compost it and return it, they still clean it up) Even most meadows get mowed once in awhile. If there is any rearranging of the plants or plant-matter, it's a garden.
C.L.

C.L.: I like your definition but have to give it some thought before I can comment (just got back from Seattle -- big restaurant opening party last night -- and my head is not quite clear today).

I beg to disagree. We are talking fiction here. Right? So if a fictitious character is walking through a fictitious Montana wood on a fictitious March day who knows what it will pick? It is the writers job to set the parameters surely, unless he is writing a hiking guide.

I'm afraid you are confusing "fiction" and "science fiction."

Timothy prepared for a hike in the woods, it was March and we all know how chilly the wind can be in March so he put on the new parka his mum had bought him for Christmas. There was a label on the back saying LL Bean and a tie cord at the front so there was no confusion as to which was fore and which was aft, which are two words he learned last summer when he went sailing and nearly drowned when he fell into the water, one of the words means front and the other word means back. There was a packed lunch in in the knapsack he would put on his back, two crunchy peanut butter sandwiches on slices of organic whole wheat bread and a wild strawberries muesli bar. Timothy's mother knew how much he liked wild strawberries when he was hiking and how unlikely it would be for him to find them in Montana at this time of the year Montana being as it is in the North and the strawberries would not be ripe yet although you could buy the cultivated ones grown in a greenhouse somewhere and shipped to supermarkets around the world and put into icecream or yoghurt but they were not the real thing and the real thing is better especially when you were hiking.

Yes?

at what point does the "natural" landscape become a garden -- if it does at all.

The landscape becomes a garden when you start weeding it.

The landscape becomes a garden when you are able to see like Leonardo da Vinci.

The landscape becomes a garden when you build a wall around it.

The landscape becomes a garden when underpaid migrant laborers in Houston make it into a garden.

I suspect that the urge to improve on Nature and change it from an unspoiled natural garden into a contrived human artifice must be an Anglo thing. One of the first European explorers to visit the inland waters of the Pacific Northwest, marveled about the beauty of the natural landscape, but he immediately thought about "improving" it:

(Journal. June 1992)
"The surrounding country, for several miles in most points of view, presented a delightful prospect, consisting chiefly of spacious meadows elegantly adorned with clumps; of trees; amongst which the oak bore a very considerable proportion, in size from four to six feet in circumference. In these beautiful pastures, bordering on and expansive sheet of water, the deer were seen playing about in great numbers. Nature had here provided the well-stocked park, and wanted only theassistance of art to constitute that desirable assemblage of surface, which is so much sought in other countries, and only to be acquired by an immoderate expense in manual labour. . . . "

And how does Vancouver envision this "assistance of art"? Earlier in the Journal. when describing a similarly beautiful landscape, he makes it clear that it could be vastly improved if it were made o look like English countryside of his times:

"The serenity of the climate, the innumerable pleasing landscapes, and the abundant fertility that unassisted nature puts forth, require only to be enriched by the industry of man with villages, mansions, and cottages, and other buildings to render it the most lovely country that can be imagined; . . . . "

I think we have come a long way, since we (or at least some of us) can now appreciate natural "gardens" and leave them untouched by the "improving" hand of builders and gardeners.

Probably the best natural garden would be one untouched by human eyes.

Untouched by scheming human eyes [and busy human hands].

I can't think why you would post something so obviously uneducated John, unless you were trying to stir up a response.
George Vancouver was sent off, like a lot of explorers, to find something that wasn't there. It was an imperial mission. It is very likely that what he wrote was more to do with what he thought his sponsors wanted to hear than anything else. There were Spanish missions doing the same thing and reporting in much the same way. Add to this the fact that the notion of art would have been different in the 18th century than now and I think you will agree that you have jumped to a conclusion.
I would agree that imperialism does not look for ways to draw out the natural qualities from a land and its people but rather imposes its own cultural values but to say this is an "Anglo thing" is nonsense.

Tony, you really need to go back to your history books.

The Spanish missions were a thousand miles to the south, in a different, more Mediterranean landscape. (And while the Spanish, in the wake of James Cook and British traders, established a couple of settlements on the outer coast, these were not long lived.

Like many explorers, Vancouver wasn't just out to fulfill his "imperial" mission (though Britain did not yet think of itself as "imperial" at that time [before the Indian Mutiny]) but was also looking for land that could be colonized by his countrymen. In that respect, his descriptions read like an advertisement for the new-found lands. (They also reflect his knowledge of British garden fads of the time.)

It seems ironic that Vancouver's "dream" was realized by Americans, while the feudalist and monopolistic British Hudson's Bay Company hampered settlement in what is now western Canada.

natural "gardens" a lot like saying natural "zoos" ??

By the way the Aztecs had quite a bit of horticulture and gardening when the Spanish arrived in the New World .... I think that weakens the Anglo theory .......

Not to mention the millions that made up the aboriginal population already working the land that Vancouver and his ilk chose either to ignore or to romanticise.