Description:
Gardens provoke thought and engagement in ways that are often overlooked. This book explores the philosophical issues raised by art gardens, such as the meaningful encounters of humans, animals and plants in the context of the garden. Tupare, a garden in New Zealand, is used as source material.
Review Quotes:
Powell's stimulating and rigorously argued book offers new insights into the ways in which we experience and understand gardens, how we conceptualise their ontology, and how we appreciate their temporality and material beauty. A timely and highly engaging account that reintroduces gardens' distinctive qualities, features, processes, aesthetic possibilities, and arthood as sites of joy and celebration. (Professor Samer Akkach, Founding Director, CAMEA, University of Adelaide)
Dancing with Time offers a novel account of gardens that returns them to a prized position in the artworld. Highlighting their distinctive, four-dimensional nature, this important work explains how temporality enriches our experience of gardens. The rich examination of gardens' status as art will delight aestheticians, landscape design theorists, and garden lovers alike. (Professor Sondra Bacharach, Professor of Philosophy, Victoria University of Wellington)
A welcome addition to the growing interest in philosophical writing about gardens. ... Powell's search for answers as to whether or not gardens can (again) be an art form and the nature of their ontological status is careful and exacting ... (Isis Brook, British Journal of Aesthetics, 2019)