The skyline of the center panel (220 × 195 cm, 87 × 77 in) matches exactly with that of the left wing, while the positioning of its two central pools echoes the lake in the earlier panel. The center image depicts the expansive "garden" landscape which gives the triptych its name. The panel shares a common horizon with the left wing, suggesting a temporal and spatial connection between the two scenes.[32] The garden is teeming with male and female nudes, together with a variety of animals, plants and fruit.[33] The setting is not the paradise shown in the left panel, but neither is it based in the terrestrial realm.[34] Fantastic creatures mingle with the real; otherwise ordinary fruits appear engorged to a gigantic size. The figures are engaged in diverse amorous sports and activities, both in couples and in groups. Gibson describes them as behaving "overtly and without shame",[35] while art historian Laurinda Dixon writes that the human figures exhibit "a certain adolescent sexual curiosity".[22]
The numerous human figures revel in an innocent, self-absorbed joy as they engage in a wide range of activities: some enjoy sexual pleasures, others play unselfconsciously in the water, and yet others cavort in meadows with a variety of animals, seemingly at one with nature. In the middle of the background, a large blue globe resembling a fruit pod rises in the middle of a pond. Visible through its circular window is a man fondling his partner's genitals, and the bare buttocks of yet another figure hover in the vicinity. According to the 20th-century folklorist and art historian Wilhelm Fränger, the eroticism of the center frame could be considered either as an allegory of transience or a playground of corruption.[36]
In the right-hand side of the foreground stand a group of both fair and black-skinned figures. Some of these fair-skinned figures, male and female alike, are covered from head to foot in light-brown body hair. Scholars generally agree that these hirsute figures represent wild or primeval man but disagree on the symbolism of their inclusion. Art historian Patrik Reuterswärd, for example, posits that they may be seen as "the noble savage" who represents "an imagined alternative to our civilized life", imbuing the panel with "a more clear-cut primitivistic note".[38] Writer Peter Glum, in contrast, sees the figures as intrinsically connected with whoredom and lust.[39]
In a cave to their lower right a male figure points towards a reclining female who is also covered in hair.(image) The pointing man is the only clothed figure in the panel, and as Fränger observes, "he is clothed with emphatic austerity right up to his throat".[40] In addition, he is one of the few human figures with dark hair, and the only human who does not have an idealised face; instead his features are remarkably individual. According to Fränger:
The way this man's dark hair grows, with the sharp dip in the middle of his high forehead, as though concentrating there all the energy of the masculine M, makes his face different from all the others. His coal-black eyes are rigidly focused in a gaze that expresses compelling force. The nose is unusually long and boldly curved. The mouth is wide and sensual, but the lips are firmly shut in a straight line, the corners strongly marked and tightened into final points, and this strengthens the impression—already suggested by the eyes—of a strong controlling will. It is an extraordinarily fascinating face, reminding us of faces of famous men, especially of Machiavelli's; and indeed the whole aspect of the head suggests something Mediterranean, as though this man had acquired his frank, searching, superior air at Italian academies.[40]
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