The dualist character of a garden’s aesthetic properties

Abstract

The attribution of perceptually based aesthetic properties to a garden should be indexed to whether that attribution is (1) to the ever-changing dynamic garden or (2) to some phenomenal capture of the garden in one’s experience, frozen like a photograph. Perceptually based aesthetic properties are used to identify objects, to compare them to others, to evaluate them, and to describe them as we seek to interpret or find meaning in them. This set of activities requires aesthetic properties that do not change, or at least not much, if any degree of normativity is to be maintained. But those aesthetic properties that are derived from our immediate sensations of a garden only describe a garden at a certain time, under certain conditions, in certain states—all of which change constantly. Both descriptions are useful, and perhaps necessary, for appreciating gardens.