09/02/2025
Why Cultivate Beauty?
"We do not want merely to see beauty... we want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it." – C.S. Lewis
Imagine yourself in a garden. In a place deeply infused by you with connection, purpose, and meaning. This garden is a source of great intuitive comfort; you know it in your DNA. You know the repetition of pattern and form, the way light moves through petals and leaves and splinters across a smooth expanse of lawn. You know it in the artful balance of color and tone from one bloom to the next, in the seasonal rituals of care and commitment.
You have a deep and abiding love for this place, for its rhythm and flow, for the beauty and complexity of its plantings, for all the metaphors of what it means to cultivate and tend to living things.
Your garden may be mutable and imperfect, but in its intimate seasonal conversation with you, it tells you who you are, and perhaps who you might become.
To garden is to cultivate a way of life, a way of being, of belonging. I would argue that the garden is the first place–the truest place–that we can belong to. In Voltaire’s timeless words, “We must cultivate our garden.” He proposes that the garden is a metaphor for the nourishing of the self, for the compassionate inclusion of community, for the cultivation of purpose and, ultimately, Love.
Cultivating Beauty: Finding Purpose, Wellness, and Wonder in the Garden (Matthew Benson, TIMBER PRESS 2026)
