From England to Eden 137
II
In contrast to the ‘thousands’ of gardens populating England, there are only two
mentioned in South America. One is at the hotel occupied by English tourists,
and the other is at the Villa San Gervasio. Woolf ’s description of the garden at
the villa is worth quoting at length, as the detail provided is of particular interest:
Th e villa was a roomy white house, which, as is the case with most continental houses,
looked to an English eye frail, ramshackle, and absurdly frivolous, more like a pagoda
in a tea garden than a place where one slept. Th e garden called urgently for the ser-
vices of a gardener. Bushes waved their branches across the paths, and the blades of
grass, with spaces of earth between them, could be counted. In the circular piece
of ground in front of the verandah were two cracked vases, from which red fl owers
drooped, with a stone fountain between them, now parched in the sun. Th e circular
garden led to a long garden where the gardener’s shears had scarcely been, unless now
and then, when he cut a bough of blossom for his beloved. A few tall trees shaded
it, and round bushes with wax-like fl owers mobbed their heads together in a row. A
garden smoothly laid with turf, divided by thick hedges, with raised beds of bright
fl owers, such as we keep within walls in England, would have been out of place upon
the side of this bare hill. Th ere was no ugliness to shut out.^21Th at Woolf intends for the reader to contrast this garden with the ones in Eng-
land, is made clear by her direct comparison at the end of the passage. Th is
comparison emphasizes the distinctive structure of the spaces, using landscaping
as a metaphor through which to approach social and cultural diff erence. English
gardens are characterized by thick divisions, hedges and walls; it is designed to
‘shut out’ the ‘ugliness’ beyond. In contrast, the villa’s garden grows beyond its
boundaries, creating an inclusive landscape that challenges divisive concepts of
interior and exterior. Th e house blends into the garden space, appearing like a
feature of the garden (a pagoda) rather than as a distinctly domestic symbol. Th e
description of the villa’s exterior is very brief, and the building quickly becomes
secondary to the natural space surrounding it. It is not just the ultimate bound-
aries of the garden that are unclear; the barriers within it are also ineff ective.
Bushes encroach on paths, the fl owers droop over the edge of vases, and the vases
themselves are poor containers, being ‘cracked’. Th e boundaries that are broken
down in the garden space are also refl ected in the social boundaries that are dis-
solved between master and servant. Th e gardener is markedly absent though
‘urgently needed’, his shears having ‘scarcely been’ in places. He asserts his right
to the space by taking entire ‘bough[s] of blossom for his beloved’, which con-
trasts with the image of the gardener as a servile fi gure who attends to the space
without owning it. Furthermore, the fl owers at the villa are cut for the purposes
of courtship; unlike those in the ‘thousands of small gardens’, they benefi t a per-
sonal relationship instead of an institutional one.