In a series of letters written between 1771 and 1773, Jean-Jacques Rousseau warned his friend, Madame Étienne Delessert, against the practice of horticulture. Commonly thought of as a philosopher, Rousseau’s abiding interests were music and, especially in the declining years of his life, botany. If the study of plants was respectable and salutary, the landscaping of gardens, he thought, where the imprint of the gardener’s hand deforms nature, was a grotesque enterprise performed by monsters. Tutoring Mme Delessert on how to observe spring flowers, the philosopher-botanist wrote:
To the extent that you will find them double, do not occupy yourself with their examination; they will be disfigured, or if you want, adorned according to our fashion, nature will not find herself in them anymore: she refuses to reproduce by monsters thus mutilated; because if the most brilliant part, that is, the corolla, multiplies itself, it is at the expense of the most essential parts, which disappeared under this brilliance. Take then a simple Wallflower, and proceed to the analysis of its flower.
Content from our partners
