The Art of Gardening and Sailing

In the garden with friends. Why not hire them as your crew?

Although yachters are often god at telling stories, their fibs are seldom about gardening, about growing asparagus or Indian corn. And to be honest, I’ve never heard sailors talk within other sailors’ earshot about their “green fingers”. Probably gardening is not considered to be within their department; it is women’s work and most yachtsmen still are men. The list of members in your sailing club is in most cases proof enough, although the secretary is often a yachters’ wife. This is downright shame and need to be changed. And to be honest, I thing women not only makes up the best crew, they also are the best captains, if only these low-browed men stop yelling.

Unfortunately the ship is still Adam’s world, while the garden - in spite of her lust for apples and flesh - is Eve’s place. And nowadays it is easier for a gay man to come out of the closet, than for a yachter to enter his garden – if not in secret. There are reasons for this. Sailing is associated with freedom, adventures and deeds, and even the wimpiest managing director likes to bask in the glory of this myth. He’ll sink the company’s brand new yacht while accomplishing his entertainment duties, rather than assisting his wife in her small allotment. Gardening on the other hand is associated with peace and quiescence, with immanence and seclusion. Of course sensual connotations are also attached to the garden – for instance the romantic garden, located in some archaic past or in the Orient. But in our yachtsman’s imagination, these are precisely the types of garden – in some distant waters – where his coming conquests are to take place, finding there some indigenous princess of his dreams. In mysterious ways, dreams of erotic bliss are affiliated to his imaginary explorations, and not to his beautiful wife’s communal garden patch (though maybe he should worry who else might find pleasure in visiting her? As you understand, there are good reasons for yachtsmen to take more interest in gardening, at least when not sailing. Besides, the ship and the garden are in some way connected. The philosopher Michel Foucault has called attention to certain places, marked by certain multifarious time/space-configuration, and imbued with many of the most important ideas and notions in culture. Maybe both the ship and the garden are vessels of meaning in this way, expressing important aspects of our understanding of ourselves, and the always-changing culture surrounding us. At least both are an insulated world, a world in miniature, and at the same time a stage where passion and violence are performed. Both the ship and the garden is a kind of theatrum mundi – constantly staging life’s many tragic and comic plays. There are important differences, though, between ship and garden, and most important: Although a separate space, the ship – with it's crew – is under way from ocean to ocean, from port to port, a tiny dot on the huge surface of the sea. The garden is also a separate place, it is secluded but is not under way. It is changing though, but in another sense, following the seasons. It turns green, grows and withers away – as life always does. In this way, both the ship and the garden is connected to some fundamental conditions regarding existence itself. So where should we go, to the harbour, signing on, or should we turn to the garden, making meaning by cultivating the soil and ourselves?

In Voltaire’s book Candide (1759), the parodical philosopher Pangloss lists all the adventures befalling Candide until he calmes down at his farm at last. “All that is very well, answered Candide, but let us cultivate our garden.” Only late in life Candide learns that cultivating the soil preserves us from three great evils; weariness, vice, and want. But is Candide’s voyages a precondition for his wisdom? It's always necessary to circumnavigate existence, but it might be possible to do this both by cultivating ones garden, and by sailing the seven seas. Some chosen sailors are capable of strolling to and fro, from the garden to the harbour, somtimes even hiring the gardener as the ship’s first mate.