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Delving into the Colonial Roots of Gardening
Jul
Spring has arrived early this year. The weather is warming up, and spring flowers like daffodils and tulips, as well as magnolias and cherry blossoms, have all but come and gone.
Many of you have probably already done some spring cleaning in your gardens or common areas. You may be thinking about what you will plant this year.
This week Don’t call me immune podcast, we thought it was the perfect time to rewatch one of our most popular episodes from last year on the complicated colonial roots of gardening. In this episode, we explore how colonial history has influenced what we plant and who can garden. And we look to a novel way forward by discussing practical gardening tips that incorporate Indigenous knowledge.
We speak with two people with deep knowledge on the subject. Jacqueline L. Scott is a PhD candidate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on wilderness and making it a welcoming space for Black people. And community activist Carolynne Crawley is a Mi’kmaw, Black, and Irish woman. She is a member of the Indigenous Land Stewardship Circle in Tkaronto and leads workshops and walks that integrate Indigenous teachings into practice.
Scott says:
“Gardening is absolutely great, but it’s a intricate and multi-layered history, and not everyone has the freedom to go into a garden and plant whatever they want to plant. And so, recognizing some of those histories and how those histories also come into play in the context of what we think a garden should look like, how we actually garden, what we plant in the garden, and who does the work in the garden.”
Crawley asks:
“How do you decolonize a garden? It’s not just about thinking about yourself and putting people at the top. It’s about thinking about all of our relationships… all of the beings that come into and through the garden. I learned from my family that all of these beings are our kin. The land, the water, the plants, the trees, the animals, the insects. And we should treat them with the same love, respect, and gratitude that we treat our human loved ones with.”
(Shutterstock)
Resources
Is it time to decolonize your lawn? – Globe and post office
Colonialism of Planting: Legacies of Racism and Slavery in the Practice of Botany – Architectural review
Gardening for the Rufous Bumblebee: Creating Habitat for Native Pollinators: Ontario and Great Lakes Edition (by Lorraine Johnson and Sheila Colla, 2022)
Finding flowers (research project at the University of York)
From the Archives – at The Conversation
Read more: Decolonize Your Garden: Delve into the Intricate Roots of Gardening This Long Weekend — Listen
Read more: How the Botanical Gardens’ Colonial Past Can Be Put to Good Exploit
Read more: Native seed shortages sluggish land recovery across the U.S., key to combating climate change and species extinctions
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