On Traditional Elven Gardening

The Human phrase “Elven garden” is misleading. A traditional Elf may spend decades tending a patch of forest while insisting that he has planted nothing, cultivated nothing, and altered nothing. What he means is that he has encouraged certain plants, redirected water, discouraged pests, moved stones, transplanted seedlings with permission according to local custom, and occasionally spent fifteen years persuading a tree to grow in a more convenient direction. This is apparently not gardening.

I once asked an Elven caretaker what, precisely, would qualify. He thought for some time and replied, “Forcing it.” I did not ask whether pruning counted, having learned enough.