The healing role of gardens and gardening has been long celebrated - across mythology, literature, art, and religion. Often, these healing gardens are lush and green, and people appear to live in peace and contentment; these are images of gentle people tending to plants amid beauty and delight. Cultivation refers to the preparation of and/or use for the raising of crops, or to foster growth in a garden, rather than in the wild. For millennia, people have engaged in various forms of cultivation for the health benefits to themselves and to the environment, as well as for practical purposes of growing food to feed themselves and others. But the cultivated therapeutic landscape is not only quiet and restorative; it is also intensely political. Gardening allows us to circumvent commercial pathways to feed ourselves and others. The garden represents the space where natural and built environments coalesce.
