Paper short abstract:

This paper examines two distinct sites in which gardens are created, utilized and imagined in urban and rural areas of the Peruvian Amazon.

Paper long abstract:

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in and near Iquitos, Peru, I draw on interviews and observations with folk practitioners who make use of gardens in preparing medicinal plant and food preparations for their communities, as well as Peruvian researchers who source plants from cultivated spaces in projects of scientific investigation and drug development at the Institute of Traditional Medicine. Although identical plants are approached in these contrasting sites, the sociality surrounding them varies wildly; I ask, how do aesthetics, materialities and epistemologies related to these sites and their plants differ, and how do they overlap? What relationships, knowledges and institutional practices shape how these gardens are constructed and experienced? In each site, how are plants cultivated intentionally, as spaces of practicality as well as creative and artistic works for display? This presentation employs visual documentation such as photographs, video and audio recordings to tell the story of two sites in which plants are cultivated in the Northwestern Amazon.