Garden Stories

In many religions paradise is described as a garden. Countless people would love to have something resembling paradise in this life already. From this moment on, a question arises every day: Does the garden own us or do we own the garden?

Since Adam and Eve this question has been of some importance to humanity. In her book Eva Demski follows the relationship between garden and mankind down different avenues – the cultural, the social, the personal significance of gardens. She writes about failure as well as about the joy of successfully creating a piece of heaven on earth. What happens to gardens in war zones, how do gardens save or destroy marriages, and how does one define a garden terrorist? How does art interact with the garden, what do misanthropists like to plant, and what might Epicurus’ garden have looked like?

»And she allowed everything to exist in her garden, poetry, religion, philosophy, and some misanthropy. A little bit of that lies in the nature of every passionate gardener, I believe.«

Michael Sowa, born in 1945, is a painter and graphic artist. In 1995 he was awarded the Olaf Gulbransson Prize, in 2004 the Berlin Book Prize in the category of children’s books.