Gardens have long been a critical part of society. Gardening was one of the first domestic tasks that early humans used to break out of the hunter-gatherer routine, to cultivate food and enable them to settle in one place with a stable supply of food. Even though most people do not need to garden for survival anymore, gardens are an activity that millions around the world still do for a variety of reasons.
Many people find gardening calming. Some consider it an investment in their home's beauty. Some just want fresh tomatoes for making salads and salsas and covering every freaking counter in the house with a bumper crop. Some of us just want something green and natural in our lives, and even if you can't have a glorious, glorious garden, you can get some of that beauty in your life with a garden-fresh wallpaper.
Many people with high-stress or high-visibility jobs garden as a way to ground themselves, find peace, and as a way of disconnecting and de-stressing. Diedrich Bader is an actor; you may remember him from The Drew Carey Show, Veep, and American Housewife. Bader has quite the garden, and he shares impressive photos of his garden work on Twitter, which make for lovely wallpapers.
I've shared this wallpaper before, and it remains one of the most beautiful photos I've ever taken. I took it at Disney (of course), and I think I blew about three years of luck with it. Look at the coloring, the framing, the focus! This is truly an enchanted rose, and I wonder what spells I could cast with it… This rose belonged to a garden path between Future World and World Showcase, and while that rose's petals have long since fallen, the spell it cast on me has endured.
If you want to keep a garden neat and precise but don't want to hassle with plants or dirt or — well, life — there is a garden for you, and its name is karesansui. Japanese rock gardens are a practice in imitating the essence of nature using rocks, gravel, water features, and the occasional greenery. Often meant to help with meditation, it's no surprise that the name most of us know them by is zen garden, and these gardens are very zen, assuming you have the patience and skill to wrangle them. Looking at this beautiful, geometric scene, my first thought is, "How long did this all take?"
It's followed very quickly by 'how quickly would I be killed for using that garden for some live-action chess?'
Trey Ratcliff is, in this humble blogger's opinion, one of the best photographers on the planet today. If you own a Chromecast, you've seen his work, and it is breathtaking. It helps when the subject matter is beautiful, and the Queenstown Gardens in New Zealand are just that: breathtaking natural beauty. This shot also highlights another wonderful aspect of gardens: they're always changing. They grow and grow and grow and then their leaves begin to change, their harvest ends, and plants die and go dormant for the winter. Here in this snapshot, the leaves are changing, creating wonderful contrast in the garden that is so fleeting until next year.
Under the Weeping Willows in Queenstown Gardens by Trey Ratcliff
"There's a wealth of happiness and romance, all in the golden afternoon…"
I think it's safe to say we wish our gardens could talk to us. I'd maintain a garden meticulously if we could sing together like Golden Afternoon flowers in Alice in Wonderland. The differing flowers displayed a wonderful range of voices and styles, but it's hard not to fall in love with the prima donna-esque White Rose. Her dewdrops shine like jewels, her leaves cocoon her like an emerald ball gown, she's framed by glittering spider webs… She's brilliant, and even if I can't have her in my garden, I can at least have her on my home screen.
