Nikolai and Arkady are both lovers of nature. When he is outside, Nikolai wistfully contemplates both his lost wife and his strained relationship with his son. His love of the pastoral is set up as a key contrast with Bazarov’s scientific outlook. As Nikolai paces his garden with “mournful agitation,” he imagines, “oh, how Bazarov would have made fun of him, if only he’d known what he was feeling at the moment!” (47).

Arkady also highly values the aesthetic experience of being in nature. Bazarov and Arkady seriously quarrel for the first time when Arkady describes a leaf “like a butterfly in flight” (104). Bazarov is offended, declaring, “‘I consider such fine talk indecent” (104) and trying to instigate a physical fight. Soon after, Arkady departs for Nikolskoe, where he and Katya spend a great deal of time outdoors, in an atmosphere of “trusting intimacy” (133). Their shared love of nature creates domestic harmony. In contrast, Anna and Bazarov are both “indifferent” to nature, (73), a lack of sentiment that presages their fleeting bond.

The novel links the state of each house and surrounding land with the psychological qualities of its owner.

Descriptions of Marino paint it as an estate in disarray: The estate is on “flat and barren land” and “the young trees hadn’t taken, too little water collected in the land, and that in the wells had a brackish taste” (15).