ABSTRACT
Human life is full of metaphorical gardens: the Garden of Eden, the secret gardens of our childhood stories – we may even think of planet Earth as a global garden in which all earthly creatures live. In this chapter, however, I invite you on an excursion into the unmetaphorical garden; the contemporary domestic garden, proposing that we consider the materiality of the garden as a topos for exploring human-nature relations. So, we enter a domestic, often enclosed, garden – adjacent to a house – which most likely did not result from the visions of landscape architects. Rather, the garden under scrutiny here is probably designed, implemented, and maintained by the owner. In the ordinary garden, we encounter nature – plants, flowers, trees, and wildlife – in a direct, yet distinctly ‘designed’ manner. In our mundane interaction with nature, tools, machines, and other gardening products play a central role. Accordingly, this chapter investigates how gardening is, by means of design, both making and unmaking the environment. The aim is to contribute to the understanding of our contemporary relationship with nature and advance the discussions of a potential remaking of our environment.
