Plots, plants and paradoxes: contemporary domestic gardens in Aotearoa New-Zealand

Currently, gardens, gardening and horticulture-plots and plants-are receiving increasing attention from geographers and others interested in spatial disciplines because they provide a useful lens for understanding the complex politics surrounding social and cultural life. In this paper I aim to add to this literature by examining contemporary domestic gardens as paradoxical spaces. The paper begins by outlining some of the reasons for choosing to examine contemporary domestic gardens. Following this is a brief review of a range of geographical literature on gardens, gardening and horticulture. The paper then presents data collected on domestic gardens and gardening practices in Hamilton and Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand to illustrate that domestic gardens are paradoxical spaces where the binaries nature and culture, private and public, individuality and sociality, leisure and work, and colonial and postcolonial are destabilized. The paper concludes that although domestic gardens are paradoxical spaces, this does not necessarily mean that they pose a threat or danger because of their ambiguity, or that they are sites of radical politics. Rather domestic gardens are spaces where it is possible to reinforce begemonic geographies and/or create alternative ones.