Studies of rituals in sacred gardens and landscapes offer tantalizing insights into the significance of gardens and landscapes in the societies of India, ancient Greece, Pre-Columbian Mexico, medieval Japan, post-Renaissance Europe, and America. Sacred gardens and landscapes engaged their visitors into three specific modes of agency: as anterooms spurring encounters with the netherworld; as journeys through mystical lands; and as a means of establishing a sense of locality, metaphorically rooting the dweller's own identity in a well-defined part of the material world. Each section of this book is devoted to one of these forms of agency. Together the essays reveal a profound cultural significance of gardens previously overlooked by studies of garden styles.

Michel Conan is the former Director of Garden and Landscape Studies, Dumbarton Oaks.

Read More by Michel Conan:

• Perspectives on Garden Histories
• Bourgeois and Aristocratic Cultural Encounters in Garden Art, 1550-1850
• Landscape Design and Experience of Motion
• Contemporary Garden Aesthetics, Creations and Interpretations
• Gardens, City Life, and Culture: A World Tour
• Performance and Appropriation: Profane Rituals in Gardens and Landscapes
• Botanical Progress, Horticultural Innovations, and Cultural Changes
• Environmentalism in Landscape Architecture
• Baroque Garden Cultures: Emulation, Sublimation, Subversion
• Middle East Garden Traditions: Unity and Diversity
• Gardens and Cultural Change: A Pan-American Perspective
• Gardens and Imagination: Cultural History and Agency