ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an artist’s garden, noting the way it collapses, reverses and blurs distinctions between indoor and outdoor, domestic and public spaces. While some have called them a lesbian version of gay men’s bath culture, their relation to private and public space is quite different because of their outdoor location, vertical structure that necessitates standing rather than sitting or lounging, and simple design. The visual stereotype associated with lesbian feminism might be called ‘the style of no style’: sensible shoes, practical clothing, an androgynous sameness that seeks militantly to resist desire and pleasure. The forty-year history of women’s land draws from feminism, the environmental movement and lesbian traditions to make a unique contribution to garden history. A women-only community was seen as ‘safe space’, which became a key term first for lesbian separatists such as many of the women’s land communards and later for second-wave feminism more generally, especially in the movement to end rape and domestic violence.
