Each summer the BBC organizes the biggest classical music festival in the world, namely the BBC Proms, which stretches from mid-July to early September, offering dozens of orchestral concerts, chamber and solo recitals, choral performances, and both early and brand-new music, including specially-commissioned new works.

At the 2004 Proms, on today’s date, a new piece by the British composer Judith Bingham was premiered by the BBC Chorus. Entitled “The Secret Garden,” it was inspired by several events: a conversation about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, a BBC TV series entitled “The Private World of Plants,” some rather racy descriptions of the sex life of plants by the 18th century Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, and a disturbing news story about the bombing of the so-called “Adam Tree” in Iraq at a site that locals believe was where the Garden of Eden once stood.

Bingham wrote her own text, which includes many Latin names of plants, which led to “The Secret Garden’s” subtitle: “Botanical Fantasy.”

“This is meant to be a magical piece,” says Bingham. “It has a Christian framework with opening and closing quotations from Genesis and Matthew … but the piece also seems to wonder whether the world is better off without humans, and that, should humans cease to exist, Paradise would very soon re-establish itself …”