A Reverie of Gardens

A quatrain from Ralph Waldo Emerson introduces this chapter and the idea of the "garden sentiment," referred to here as "garden-desire," is further explored. Garden-desire is not based on materialism, since it is cheaper to buy plants than to grow them. Instead, it is based on the simple idea of self-expression through the growing of plants, which breaks us out of "the long estrangement of our artificial lives." Bailey also warmly describes the process of a germinating plant, likening it to the germinating garden sentiment. Lastly, Bailey introduces an elsewhere-repeated trope of describing plants as "old friends," a companionship "of things that are real and clean." The chapter concludes with a reference to Emerson's fellow Transcendentalist, Henry David Thoreau.