ABSTRACT
Community gardens are highly regarded by citizens and local authorities as an asset to the fabric of the city and its citizens. They negotiate a space between the informal arena of everyday life and the formal regulated realm of the state. The in-between space they construct, I will refer to as liminal (Turner, 1979) where the case study of Abbey Gardens is the space where civic action takes place. This paper will outline the power relations, relations between the formal state and informal everyday life of a garden and its subsequent agency towards the role it plays within the formation of liminal civic places in our neighbourhoods. The paper will also briefly outline the meaning of liminal in current socio-political thinking to situate what it could mean for the city. This chapter also looks at the design of the garden based on the different approaches to design by artists or architects towards the making of a civic domain using the innocence and virtuous position of food growing. This chapter by setting out how the garden was constructed and governed through informal participatory methods shares the knowledge and lessons as a campaign to create more such spaces in the city.
