Abstract

Environmental virtues have become an essential ingredient in an ethics of nature. An account of environmental virtues can contribute to this ethics of natre by exploring the virtues that the gardener displays in cultivating and caring for plants. An approach that relates to the virtues of gardening is helpful in explicating a more general approach in a certain domain of interaction with nature. Good gardeners get involved in processes of natural growth and decay, they are aware of their position within the garden, and they endure ambivalences in nature. This relational account of the virtues of gardening is also exemplary in processes of active co-designing of nature and in landscaping.