Famed landscape artist Frederic Law Olmsted, whose most lingering effect was his design of Central Park in New York City started in 1858, has been quoted by Olmsted scholar Charles E. Beveridge as citing "texture, color, play of light and shade" of plantings in a garden or a landscape as representative to Olmsted of "the highest kind of sensibility that a gardener should have".

And it seems to me as someone who enjoys gardening, and absolutely treasures the visual delight experienced from observing the outcome, that his sensibility is echoed in the eyes, minds and souls of countless people who love nature in both her natural presentation and the evolution of the cultivated world of the garden.

Gardeners owe much to those intrepid botanists whose sense of curiosity took them in centuries past throughout the world to discover new species, and to send samples back to their native lands, where those species were cultivated to grow in soil alien to their natural roots. So many of our most beloved plants have come from elsewhere; China, Turkey, Japan, Central America, for example and without them our gardens would be far lesser places of serenity, contemplation and pleasure.

We perambulate through our extremely modest gardens on a daily basis, observing the changes that take place on a daily basis. Stopping here and there to stake something, tie something, deadhead something else, separate clumps and replant them elsewhere in the garden, and in the process step back to regard the results.

We never pass our front door with its glass insert without stopping momentarily to glance outside at the gardens at the front of the house. Invariably, that glance turns into a brief tryst with visual brilliance in reflection of Mr. Olmsted's philosophical and aesthetic values.

Can someone who takes delight in a garden compare the sumptuous lusciousness of a rose to that of a peony? Does sunlight falling on an urn of assorted annuals transform them into a glorious apparition of perfection, or does shade, muting the colours, or rainfall, intensifying the colours, shapes and perceptions do that? How about observing the garden at night, and breathing in the sumptuous fragrances emanating from its constituents?

Can our pleasure in the simple pursuit of mimicking nature to achieve an effect that you find irresistible in reflection of your own instinct to 'improve' on nature, betray our innermost hubris, or is it an innocent pursuit of the unattainability of perfection?