Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
My Environmental Autobiography
In the reflection of my love for the environment, several places come across my mind. These environmental locations form valuable landscapes that influenced my perceptions about the environment. Most of these landscapes are outdoor environments that have given me many life lessons in terms of personal values of nature. As a result, these landscapes have formed my value system as a young person, and as I mature in life.
One of the landscape environments is the Han’s Royal Garden landscapes in Beijing. The environmental landscape taught me the economic value of nature and the need to exploit the nature in a friendly manner. The garden is owned by the Dongchen or the Han’s Royal Garden hotel. The garden is located on 20 Qinlao Hutong, Dongcheng, Beijing, in China. The garden taught me the value of nature because of the way I observed the hotel gaining sales and revenues from the people who want to spend time in the garden.
Through this location, I learnt the value of conserving the environment. One of the reasons I picked from the landscape is the importance of the conservation on the natural processes. The natural processes of plant life and flower formation gives the landscape its aesthetic value. Therefore, without conserving the environment well, there is I learnt how to conserve the he natural process of plant growth and its reward to the people. This location has a number of features that taught me this lesson
Another important lesson is that nature is a part of the universe that requires human beings to care for it and love it. I learned that the garden at the hotel compound is admirable because it is taken care of by the management. This is the reason why the garden is better than other locations in the nearby community of Beijing. One of the important aspects of the garden is the small land that is well utilized to create a lovely landscape. One of the concepts of the ecology holds that land is a community that requires to be loved and taken care of (Callicott et al, 2014). Learning this lesson from class was easier because I could connect with my memories of the Han’s Royal Garden.
The interaction between the elements of nature in the garden becomes beneficial to the hotel, despite the hotel being a pure hospitality business. The lesson resonates with the ideas of Aldo Leopold that soil, water, plants, air, and animals interact with the human beings to form a community (Gorman, 2012). In this interaction, it is the hotel that gains through the income generated from the people who come to enjoy the garden. This is, however, a result of the conservation effort that the management of the hotel has vested in the garden. The trees are well kept and the grass trimmed to perfection and well landscaped for the guests to enjoy.
The environmental landscapes taught me a general value of conserving the environment. I learnt that the environment requires a positive contribution from human beings to complete the relationship between each part of the environment. More importantly, I learned the symbiotic relationship between the various elements of nature creates self balance. Symbolically, I can be part of the environment, when I protect nature. This is because nature gives back by sustaining my livelihood. This is done through the provision of air, oxygen, water, and food through animals and the plants that live in it (Gorman 2012). This way, the garden environmental landscapes formed my basis of appreciating nature and understanding my own environmental values.
References
Callicott, J. B., McRae, J., & James, G. A. (2014). Environmental Philosophy in Asian traditions of thought. New York: State University Press
Gorman, M. E. (2012). Transforming Nature: Ethics, invention and discovery. New York: Springer Science Business Media, LLC