Is there a work of art more thoroughly decadent than a beautifully made greenhouse? I do not mean those low, simple constructions spanning many acres, meant for mass production of vegetables and flowers or tiny tunnels for producing those for one household. I talk about palm houses, about Eden Project in Cornwall, about Climatron in Missouri Botanical Garden, about Royal Greenhouses of Laeken. Cathedrals of steel, aluminum, glass and transparent plastic.
Duke des Esseintes spends a chapter of À rebours admiring his collection of exotic plants, fresh and bizzare when compared to what was common in his time and place. Further, he admires the work of gardeners who shaped those plants, well aware that their bizzare shapes, colours and textures are work of men who were daring enough to shape what was given to them from nature.
Isn't a fair orangerie, a splendid palmhouse an exagerration of this line of thinking? Isn't it what cathedral is to a wayside shrine? Plants placed where nature did not intend them to be, kept in a climate controlled by human artistry, sealed within a palace of transparent panes bound by filigree of metal. That temple to Apollo and Pomona, that palace of man shaped materials housing man shaped fruits and flowers. Trees growing near each other in defiance of geographic borders, species unchanged for million of years growing next to cultivars that would not exist without thousands of years of human gardeners shaping them. A piece of rainforest, desert and mediterranean orchard all next to each other, separated by a layer of glass from the bitter snow outside.
The Interior of the Palm House on the Pfaueninsel Near Potsdam by Carl Blechen
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