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Gardens of Heaven and Earth, by Dr. Kristin King
Do gardens illustrate our efforts to impose order on the natural world? Or are they an attempt to transcend its natural order, and reach for something beyond?
In her new book, Gardens of Heaven and Earth, Dr. Kristin King (President of Bryn Athyn College) explores these questions offering a unique and discursive history of gardens and their varied significance across a wide range of cultures. Drawing particular inspiration from the work of Emanuel Swedenborg, she explores the metaphor of the garden as a model for heaven and the meanings behind our desires and efforts to maintain, manipulate and ornament our environment. Kristin King's lyrical study of gardens in the life and works of Swedenborg is an investigation into the nature of experience, the limitations of language, and the idea of the garden as both a relationship to be experienced and as a symbolic language to be read.