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Paper Short Abstract:

This paper analyses how, in moments of crisis, European city dwellers often create green refuges at home to escape dangerous urban environments. By filling their houses with plants, people seek to produce idyllic jungles, spaces that question our imaginaries of wilderness, nature, and plant agency.

Paper Abstract:

This paper focuses on an often hidden, albeit ubiquitous, aspect of urban greenery: houseplants. In periods of uncertainty and difficulty in accessing green spaces, many European city inhabitants seek to replicate natural environments at home. In the Victorian period, air pollution plagued large British cities, leading to an increase in the construction of conservatories at middle-class houses. Similarly, in the early 2020s, the Covid-19 pandemic meant that the urban air had become dangerous. Consequently, the requirement to stay at home stimulated many to improve their domestic spaces, often by cultivating houseplants. In both cases, the fascination with urban jungles reflects a desire to create what is imagined to be an Edenic nature in domestic spaces. Tropical plants thus become urban citizens apparently under the complete control of humans. Nevertheless, houseplants are quick to take over their new homes. This intimate proximity between city dwellers and their plants enables a renewed sensibility to plant agency. It is by trying to create and control the jungle and its inhabitants that indoor gardeners come to understand that plants are not easily subjugated, but rather have strong desires and agency. Attempts to create green indoor spaces can thus lead to new imaginaries of wilderness, nature, and plant agency. Drawing on historical research and ongoing fieldwork with European houseplant collectors, this paper seeks to understand forms of political representation and urban citizenship of houseplants.