Landscape literacy & the grammar of gardening

“Landscape literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, conserve,create, communicate, preserve, propagate, cultivate, grow and use plants as well as natural and man-made materials associated with varying social contexts. Landscape literacy involves a continuum of learning to enable an individual to achieve his or her goals, to develop his or her knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in the truth of the relation between human beings, their world, and the cause or ground which gives rise to the world. To be landscape literate is to experience or feel the world as intimate and personal; to recognize that this is the world just as it is with out any shadows or hidden meanings. The grammar of landscape allows the experience of the union of man and nature, and the realization of their co-dependent state. The grammar of landscape and the syntax of gardening make possible an understanding and differentiation of what is artifice and what is natural. “ John Peter Thompson