Eden garden

English

Alternative forms

• Eden-garden

Proper noun

Eden garden (plural Eden Gardens)

1. The Garden of Eden.
   • 1920, Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., published 1921, page 175:

     What a strangely apt picture in a few words (if we like to take it so) of the long pilgrimage of the Human Race, its early and pathetic clinging to the tradition of the Eden-garden, its careless and vigorous boyhood, its meditative youth, with consciousness of sin and endless expiatory ritual in Nature's bosom, its fleeting visions of salvation, and finally its complete disillusionment and despair in the world-slaughter and unbelief of the twentieth century!

Noun

Eden garden (plural Eden Gardens)

1. An idyllic place wherein innocence and perfection reign; any delightful region or abode; a wondrously abundant garden or lush natural habitat.
   • 1920, Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., published 1921, page 175:

     But the forgetfulness was not entire; the memory lingered long of an age of harmony, of an Eden-garden left behind.

   • 1986, Dolores Rosenblum, Christina Rossetti: The Poetry of Endurance, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, page 73:

     The origin of these fruits is an Eden-garden, she thinks.

2. A state or condition of unsullied innocence.
   • 1849, Hogg's Instructor, Edinburgh: James Hogg, page 810, column 1:

     Nature, in endowing her little ones - in planting in the heart of each of them an Eden garden, fairer than the terrestrial paradise which Adam lost - reads a great lesson to their guides and teachers.