{"id":20501,"date":"2020-05-01T21:31:10","date_gmt":"2020-05-01T21:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=20501"},"modified":"2020-05-01T21:31:10","modified_gmt":"2020-05-01T21:31:10","slug":"the-impulse-to-garden-in-hard-times-has-deep-roots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/the-impulse-to-garden-in-hard-times-has-deep-roots\/","title":{"rendered":"The impulse to garden in hard times has deep roots"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jennifer Atkinson<\/a>, University of Washington<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The coronavirus pandemic has set off a global gardening boom<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the early days of lockdown, seed suppliers were depleted<\/a> of inventory and reported<\/a> \u201cunprecedented\u201d demand. Within the U.S., the trend has been<\/a> compared<\/a> to World War II victory gardening<\/a>, when Americans grew food at home to support the war effort and feed their families.<\/p>\n

The analogy is surely convenient. But it reveals only one piece in a much bigger story about why people garden in hard times. Americans have long turned to the soil in moments of upheaval to manage anxieties and imagine alternatives. My research<\/a> has even led me to see gardening as a hidden landscape of desire for belonging and connection; for contact with nature; and for creative expression and improved health. <\/p>\n

These motives have varied across time as growers respond to different historical circumstances. Today, what drives people to garden may not be the fear of hunger so much as hunger for physical contact, hope for nature\u2019s resilience and a longing to engage in work that is real. <\/p>\n

Why Americans garden<\/h2>\n

Prior to industrialization, most Americans were farmers<\/a> and would have considered it odd to grow food as a leisure activity. But as they moved into cities and suburbs to take factory and office jobs, coming home to putter around in one\u2019s potato beds took on a kind of novelty. Gardening also appealed to nostalgia for the passing of traditional farm life. <\/p>\n

For black Americans denied the opportunity to abandon subsistence work, Jim Crow-era gardening reflected a different set of desires. <\/p>\n

In her essay \u201cIn Search of Our Mothers\u2019 Gardens<\/a>,\u201d Alice Walker recalls her mother tending an extravagant flower garden late at night after finishing brutal days of field labor. As a child, she wondered why anyone would voluntarily add one more task to such a difficult life. Later, Walker understood that gardening wasn\u2019t just another form of labor; it was an act of artistic expression.<\/p>\n

Particularly for black women relegated to society\u2019s least desirable jobs, gardening offered the chance to reshape a small piece of the world in, as Walker put it, one\u2019s \u201cpersonal image of Beauty.\u201d<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t to say that food is always a secondary factor in gardening passions. Convenience cuisine in the 1950s spawned its own generation<\/a> of home-growers and back-to-the-land<\/a> movements rebelling against a mid-century diet<\/a> now infamous for Jell-O mold salads, canned-food casseroles, TV dinner and Tang. <\/p>\n

For millennial-era growers, gardens have responded to longings for community and inclusion<\/a>, especially among marginalized groups<\/a>. Immigrants and inner-city residents lacking access to green space and fresh produce have taken up \u201cguerrilla gardening<\/a>\u201d in vacant lots to revitalize their communities. <\/p>\n

\n \"\"
\n An immigrant tends his plot at the South Central Community Farm in Los Angeles.<\/span>
\n David McNew\/Getty Images<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 2011, Ron Finley \u2013 a resident of South Central L.A. and self-identified \u201cgangsta gardener<\/a>\u201d \u2013 was even threatened with arrest for installing vegetable plots along sidewalks.<\/p>\n

Such appropriations of public space for community use are often seen as threats to existing power structures. Moreover, many people can\u2019t wrap their heads around the idea that someone would spend time cultivating a garden but not reap all of the rewards. <\/p>\n

When reporters asked Finley if he were concerned that people would steal the food, he replied<\/a>, \u201cHell no I ain\u2019t afraid they\u2019re gonna steal it, that\u2019s why it\u2019s on the street!\u201d<\/p>\n

Gardening in the age of screens<\/h2>\n

Since the lockdown began, I\u2019ve watched my sister Amanda Fritzsche transform her neglected backyard in Cayucos, California, into a blooming sanctuary. She has also gotten into Zoom workouts, binged on Netflix and joined online happy hours. But as the weeks stretch into months, she seems to have less energy for those virtual encounters. <\/p>\n

Gardening, on the other hand, has overtaken her life. Plantings that started out back have expanded around the side of the house, and gardening sessions have stretched later into the evening, when she sometimes works by headlamp. <\/p>\n

When I asked about her new obsession, Amanda kept returning to her unease with screen time. She told me that virtual sessions gave a momentary boost, but \u201cthere\u2019s always something missing \u2026 an empty feeling when you log off.\u201d <\/p>\n

Many can probably sense what\u2019s missing. It\u2019s the physical presence of others, and the opportunity to use our bodies in ways that matter. It\u2019s the same longing for community that fills coffee shops with fellow gig workers and yoga studios with the heat of other bodies. It\u2019s the electricity of the crowd at a concert, the students whispering behind you in class.<\/p>\n

And so if the novel coronavirus underscores an age of distancing, gardening arises as an antidote, extending the promise of contact with something real. My sister talked about this, too: how gardening appealed to the whole body, naming sensory pleasures like \u201chearing song birds and insects, tasting herbs, the smell of dirt and flowers, the warm sun and satisfying ache.\u201d While the virtual world may have its own ability to absorb attention, it is not immersive in the way gardening can be.<\/p>\n

But this season, gardening is about more than physical activity for the sake of activity. Robin Wallace, owner of a photo production business in Camarillo, California, noted how the lockdown made her professional identity \u201csuddenly irrelevant\u201d as a \u201cnon-essential\u201d worker. She went on to point out a key benefit of her garden: \u201cThe gardener is never without a purpose, a schedule, a mission.\u201d <\/p>\n

As automation and better algorithms make more forms of work obsolete, that longing for purpose gains special urgency. Gardens are a reminder that there are limits to what can be done without physical presence. As with handshakes and hugs, one cannot garden through a screen. <\/p>\n

You might pick up skills from YouTube, but, as gardening icon Russell Page once wrote<\/a>, real expertise comes from directly handling plants, \u201cgetting to know their likes and dislikes by smell and touch. \u2018Book learning\u2019 gave me information,\u201d he explained, \u201cbut only physical contact can give any real \u2026 understanding of a live organism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Filling the void<\/h2>\n

Page\u2019s observation suggests a final reason why the coronavirus pandemic has ignited such a flurry of gardening. Our era is one of profound loneliness<\/a>, and the proliferation of digital devices<\/a> is only one of the causes. That emptiness also proceeds from the staggering retreat of nature<\/a>, a process underway well before screen addiction. The people coming of age during the COVID-19 pandemic have already witnessed oceans die and glaciers disappear, watched Australia and the Amazon burn and mourned the astonishing loss of global wildlife<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Perhaps this explains why stories of nature\u2019s \u201ccomeback\u201d<\/a> are continually popping up<\/a> alongside those gardening headlines. We cheer at images of animals reclaiming<\/a> abandoned spaces and birds filling skies cleared of pollution. Some of these accounts are credible, others dubious<\/a>. What matters, I think, is that they offer a glimpse of the world as we wish it could be: In a time of immense suffering and climate breakdown, we are desperate for signs of life\u2019s resilience. <\/p>\n

My final conversation with Wallace offered a clue as to how this desire is also fueling today\u2019s gardening craze. She marveled at how life in the garden continues to \u201cspring forth in our absence, or even because of our absence.\u201d Then she closed with an insight at once \u201cliberating\u201d and \u201chumiliating\u201d that touches on hopes reaching far beyond the nation\u2019s backyards: \u201cNo matter what we do, or how the conference call goes, the garden will carry on, with or without us.\u201d <\/p>\n

[You need to understand the coronavirus pandemic, and we can help.<\/em> Read The Conversation\u2019s newsletter<\/a>.]\"The<\/p>\n

Jennifer Atkinson<\/a>, Senior Lecturer, Environmental Studies, University of Washington<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jennifer Atkinson, University of Washington The coronavirus pandemic has set off a global gardening boom. In the early days of lockdown, seed suppliers were depleted of inventory and reported \u201cunprecedented\u201d demand. Within the U.S., the trend has been compared to World War II victory gardening, when Americans grew food at home to support the war […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":20502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[139,4689,7559,2406,582,8022,191,2224,171,186,4783,573],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20501"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20501"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20503,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20501\/revisions\/20503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}