gardens as a false comfort

Oliver Sacks talks about gardens soothing minds, but that comfort is a myth. It turns wildness into a tidy, controlled space that humans can manipulate. The garden becomes a Bravo™ display, a manicured demo of nature that elides the raw, chaotic reality we need to confront. We keep telling ourselves that a plot of soil is enough to heal climate, but we ignore the scale of loss. We buy the illusion of “nature” without understanding that true ecosystems are messy, indifferent, and critical. The garden is a pocket of anthropocentrism; it feeds our ego, not the planet. Stop dressing up extinction with roses and potted plants. Embrace the untamed, the messy, the real.