Paper short abstract:

Gardens are personal spaces by which gardeners extend their homes into the realm of nature, through a complex set of social and multisensory engagements. Gardeners and plants develop mutually embodied relationships. In effect, they cultivate each other.

Paper long abstract:

Gardens are highly personal spaces and a means by which gardeners extend their sense of home outwards from their dwelling's walls. To garden requires a set of specialized knowledge that often is acquired through complex social relationships with other gardeners and horticultural institutions. More than theoretical knowledge is needed, however. The gardener commits herself to a quasi-parental and multi-sensory relationship with plants: accepting responsibility for tending, training and even disciplining leafy bodies so that they conform to the gardener's aesthetic expectations. In turn, the plants, like any offspring, exact their own demands upon the gardener's body. The garden becomes the embodiment of the gardener's desire for home to incorporate a sense of "nature," while the gardener's mind and body are trained to fulfill the garden's needs. The persona of the gardener thus grows along with the garden, producing a habitus that is at once social and individual. In the process of placing and nurturing plants, the gardener transforms both home and self.