Presentation short abstract

Gardeners are increasingly being reimagined as conservation actors. This paper argues the ‘wildlife gardener’ subject is wedded to an ideal of propertied home and individual owner/subject, which doesn’t accord with the garden worlds of diverse, classed communities, or animals themselves.

Presentation long abstract

In the face of mounting socioecological crises gardens are increasingly being reimagined as conservation spaces. No longer simply private sites where we grow plants and pursue leisure activities, domestic gardens are now touted by conservationists as spaces where we can repair ecological harms. And wildlife gardeners are represented as the people who can make this change. This opens up a huge amount of space for conservation action: in the UK over 25% of total urban area is made up of domestic gardens. This paper is drawn from a research project undertaking a critical natural history of suburban gardens in London. It challenges the efficacy of the wildlife gardening paradigm. I argue that the construct of the ‘wildlife gardener’ is wedded to a historically constituted ideal of a propertied home, and an individual subject/owner, which emerged from 19th century capitalist suburbanisation and its associated ideology of the home as private space for the individual-self. This does not accord with the ecological scale needed for meaningful impact on biodiversity, and the lives of animals that do not experience these sites as individual spaces but as entire landscapes of interconnected gardens. It also neglects the garden worlds of diverse, classed communities, whose orientations towards their gardens are mediated by a range of sociocultural, affective and political dispositions. I show how the idea of the 'the wildlife gardener' subject obscures the necessity for wildlife gardening to challenge and rethink property, community and local democratic action if it is to achieve its goals.