On Gardening
We are currently in Makuru, or winter in Noongar.
I have been grateful for the rain. Which apparently is something that we are likely to have less, as El Niño is predicted to hit strongly.
It made me think about my garden, and a bit of writing that I came across while writing a journal article on Meet Me In The Garden, a collaborative arts project between myself, Claire Billie Bushby and Mark Wahlsten. Unfortunately, life circumstances prevented us from submitting, but here is an excerpt from the paper:
The subject of climate change is not far from the minds of those who garden. Climate change impacts on the plants currently existing in gardens, and also on what plants can be grown in certain regions. Environmental historian Don Garden predicted in 2011 that climate change will herald a shift "a great shift in what is grown...Changes will be diverse according to region, unpredictable and erratic. We will see more hardy and resilient indigenous plantings..." (Garden, 2011). Writing from Victoria, Garden noted the drastic changes within his own backyard, where the drought was too much for his Alnus jorullensis, and muses, "How many gardens have shrivelled in heat, or been swept away by fire, water, or wind?...What are the climatic and weather implications for those of us who grow plants, including in our gardens?" (ibid).
My garden - which is more accurately described as a haphazard collection of largely succulents, with a few other random plants gifted or given away on verges - is mostly made up of resilient plants that can survive drier conditions. Part of it is to assuage my anxiety for forgetting to water them, and part of it is in response to our drying climate. For instance, I was always against growing grass, viewing it as a wasted indulgence of water in light of declining rainfall, drying dams and shrinking groundwater supplies. Many of my friends have similarly removed their lawns and ornamental exotics from their gardens, choosing instead to plant natives.
The act of gardening also reveals an intentional intimacy within the shaping of place and ecology, which is one thing about gardening that I didn't appreciate until I became part of Meet Me In The Garden. The choices of plants and the shaping of place can reveal the complex and intimate ways people relate to their gardens and the more-than-human world plants, wildlife, weather, pets, memories, and cultural practices.
Garden, D. Gardening in a changing climate. Australian Garden History , Vol. 22, No. 4 (April/May/June 2011), pp. 3-5