ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by reflecting on psychology and gardening, and examines the relevance of gender, age and the gardening career. Psychological explanations for human functioning tend to work on the basis that behaviour is the result of an interaction between what is innate or biologically determined and what is learned from the past and environment, which is a product of human cultural endeavour. Gardens as places of resistance and empowerment can also be seen in community gardening projects. Guerrilla gardening is like community gardening in that it involves cultivating someone else's land, but it is more surreptitious, planting or sprinkling seeds at night without permission from the landowner. Horticultural therapy is a form of occupational therapy, and occupational therapy is about finding ways to occupy people, through work, through crafts and through gardening. The variety of different psychological concepts that has been explored in relation to gardening makes it clear that there is no single psychology of gardening.
