ABSTRACT
This book asks how classed and gendered identities are played out in the ordinary garden. Turning to sources which take the garden as its focus, this chapter critically reviews an inter-disciplinary range of literature as a means of asking how British gardens, gardeners and gardening practices are documented. The first section, ‘Histories’ examines what are arguably culturally dominant approaches to garden, landscape and allotment history; it then turns to the gardeners who people those histories and movements. The second, ‘People’, looks at the types of garden spaces and sites that are documented in garden history. The third section examines relatively new scholarship on the social history of the private home garden. And finally, arguing that gardens have been important consumption sites which communicate meaning about their owners, the third section looks at a number of case studies on gardens which perform symbolic work.
