The Garden: Our Four-Thousand-Year Quest for Paradise

A globe-spanning, never-before-told epic history of the garden—from antiquity to present

Gardens have always been sacred spaces, allowing humans both to return to nature and to tame it. Avid gardener and literary historian Jonathan Bate traces our fascination with gardens across four millennia and explores their enduring influence on art, literature, philosophy, politics, and religion. Just as the Garden of Eden is central to the Judeo-Christian tradition, gardens are a major preoccupation f...