The garden and its spiritual and physical life
I believe that you have already seen photos of gardens that take your breath away in various catalogues and literature, and hopefully in my work as well. I imagine that you would wish to have them for a moment, and that you have asked yourself: Is it possible that I could for whatever reasons have such an arranged infield area? I believe that you can have them, but the question is do you really, really want such an area for yourself.
Namely, there are such gardens, someone has already designed and built them for him- or herself, so the question arises: Why would you too not feel and experience your own garden, yard or infield area, made just for you?
Having in mind the individual nature of a private house's exterior, the contents and form of that space depend on the wishes of the individual who more often than not stays there alone. In the case that there are more people in the backyard, or if more people are planned to stay there, which often is the case, then its contents and form would have to depend on all, or at least on the majority, of the household members' characters, but in any case, the space should not become universal in nature. Spaces universal in nature mean business or public areas, and a garden should not have much in common precisely with spaces planned in such a way.
A private backyard should consist of one or more individual wholes, depending on the number and interests of the users, in a way that an individual area be composed of several independent elements, not connected but instead intertwined with the elements of other wholes, in a way which allows their staying within their basic wholes.
The practical meaning of that is the following: when contemplating a garden or infield area, most of men picture a barbeque and a refrigerator placed somewhere in the back, since such are the places at which they can feel triumphant, while baking the hunted down animal and celebrating their victories. The women on the other hand in such a common space are looking for a quiet enjoyment and resting place, a place where they can feel the safety of home.
It is not necessary that all of us long for the harmony that I am mentioning here; many of us take pleasure in completely different spaces, which are fulfilling in various different ways. Such different spaces are appeasing or exciting, but what we should consider most, while getting the idea for interior design of the spaces in which we spend our precious time, is that we should keep in our minds the needs of all the users, as well as the needs of the nearer surroundings, and that we should not at all impose our special needs on others, who also have their own needs for space, and who would like to enjoy that space.
The gardens are actually parts of an object which belong to local surroundings, yet according to their nature they are dynamic, unlike the objects we live in, so they mirror the current state of mind of the people by whom they are occupied, if occupied by any, since there are very interesting exteriors not permanently occupied by anyone as was intended during the designing and engineering of such spaces.
In order for you to personalize your own space, you need not have some sort of a knowhow or some special sense of expressing yourself creatively, but you should feel free to discover what sort of a garden you would wish to have, and put prejudices, shame, great expectations, fear of criticism, auto-critique, and authority aside. While doing that, it is very important that you discover deep inside of yourself just what sort of a garden you would love to have.
To long for something always means battle of ideas, it means trying to reach a destination, something many of us long for, and it therefore means something which is universal. The wish is universal, it is deep within us all, and it cannot be measured with or compared by anything. Yet, our wishes are usually suppressed deep within ourselves, they are covered by the veil of our everyday life and hidden from our self; we cannot affect their content and intensity, we can only ignore or realize them.
But since you are reading this, you are one of the people who are considering some of the options for designing of your interior space, and it absolutely makes no difference whether your garden or backyard encompasses a single square foot or a thousand square feet. You should experience it the intuitive way, in the way in which you are able to see yourself both within the space you are familiar with and the space awaiting your discovery. Distance yourself from the usual and the supposed, discover your own wish, and realize it physically or metaphysically. Enter that imagined world and gaze at it from within; the feeling's intensity will suit your ability of getting ever closer to your inner self.
It is my hope that I have succeeded in contributing both to the design of your garden and to the environment you live in.
Author: Mirko Stijaković