Paper short abstract:

The paper dissects the rhythmicality of allotment gardening to show how the emotionality of being at home (in the garden) emerges and how it is related to the sensoriality of natural-cultural spaces of gardening.

Paper long abstract:

Allotments became part of the Czech cityscape at the beginning of the 20th century. Referred to as garden colonies, they have always been politically highly contested spaces. At the same time, as our long-term research shows (e.g. Gibas, Novák et al. 2014), they also represent spaces of intense everyday work to which gardeners are strongly attached. Based on biographical interviews, the paper analyses the gardeners' attachment to the places of gardening (garden, garden colony) and shows how this gradually develops. Drawing on Lefebvre's notion of polyrhythmia and Deleuzian view of territorialisation, the paper argues that it is rhythmical bodily engagements with material environment of one's garden that lies at the core of the fact that for many gardeners the garden becomes home more than their flat. Bodily interventions into the materiality of the garden represent instances of a continuous encounter with substances that subordinate to natural rhythms and conform to (as well as oppose) the gardeners' will. The garden is thus an outcome of a continuous rhythmical care, which moulds the material (and sensory) properties through engaging with and at the same time producing textures, odours, colours and their assemblages (both aesthetical and fertile). Gardening is repetitive as well as creative, locked in as well as productive of rhythms due to which home territorializes into the place of gardening. The paper dissects the rhythmicality to show how the emotionality of being at home (in the garden) emerges and how it is related to the sensoriality of natural-cultural spaces of gardening.