Queer botany

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

I know this was touched on a few months ago in relation to an exhibition at Kew, and I didn't understand it then either. Recently we went to the National Trust Tudor property Sutton House in Homerton (well worth a visit, btw). The adjacent tiny parcel of land was donated to the NT on condition that this former scrapyard was turned into a garden, which was done a couple of years ago. Very nice it looks too. However, it is apparently an example of queer botany. Why? Can anyone explain this to me in extremely simple terms? Does it simply mean that some of the people involved in designing and planting it identify as queer and a few of the plants have assocation with gay icons? It surely isn't implying anything about sexual reproduction, is it?

https://www.queerbotany.com/projects/platinum-garden

Is it homophobia, or just an aversion to pseudo intellectualism?

I read woollyhatter’s description of her garden and thought, what fun, what joy, how lovely.

The official description of the queer guarden at Kew Gardens my thought was, what a load of pretentious bollocks.

Its the difference between someone describing something delightful with humour, and someone creating distance by obscuring meaning and ultimately not saying anything much at all.

Can you point to this homophobia, please?

I am not homophobic. I am queer theory phobic. I think genderism is toxic.

To the list of same-sex attracted gardeners and garden writers I suggest the addition of Beverley Nichols.

Homophobia or transphobia, you don't seem at all sure? Probably because you know it's neither.

But why is a gardener’s sexuality significant? Seriously. Nobody cares about who others choose to sleep with.

That's a good question, and could be applied to any of the arts. Preferably without muddying the water by using the term 'queer' which as the post upthread acknowledges, is applied to all sorts of genderist matters that may be entirely hostile to same-sex attraction.

I’m being serious here: are there people in the world who are “hostile” towards gardeners who are same sex attracted?

I’m quoting this again because it has perfectly encapsulated what I have often previously struggled to articulate. Thank you.

Only in the sense that people can be hostile to anyone who is.
But tbh I don't see that "queer botany" has much of anything to do with the gays anyway...it looks to be your usual nightmare mishmash of transactivism, gender theory, and spicy straights desperate for attention

As has been fairly well discussed, 'queer' isn't especially about homo or bi sexuality.

I’m not L or B and I regard queer as an insult.

As to being a bit grumpy about that garden, I get it. Fundamentally we look at gardens to appreciate their beauty AND draw meaning.

Precisely because it set itself up to have queer meaning but does not deliver on it is a failure (the fact it was probably funded on the claptrap idea is also galling and not necessarily homophobic). Quoting Shakespeare, “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. Its portentousness is rather like sucking all the air out of room leaving, at least people like myself, irritated and short-changed at its lack of substantive significance.

Without direction, you could have happily enjoyed it as a garden of “found objects” as another poster saw it drawing what meaning you like from it. Everyone would have left cheerful. But instead labelling it as queer begins to feel more exclusionary than inclusionary. The labelling did that as all semiotics do. It is the difference between thinkers like Judith Butler who beats a concept to death and makes up all sorts of pretentious portmanteau labels compared to Umberto Eco whose Name of the Rose can be taken as a rollicking good detective story or a deep study of medieval thought and where he knits inside his story direct quotes from those medieval thinkers that it becomes a fun spotting game for those in the know. Eco understood pleasure was to be gained at whatever level you read his works.

By the same token, I love mostly that people appreciate first the beauty and emotional solace my quirky lady garden brings (Butler would have put lady garden in inverted commas and then written three paragraphs, half in French, explaining its subtextual meaning quoting Anais Nin etc etc). If you stop to read my plant labels and its dilettante playfulness dawns on you and that makes you smile, fabulous. But it is not a requirement of entry or enjoyment.

For me queer botany is more about dreaming about watching hermaphrodite slugs and snails destroying my brassicas in my longed-for allotment and sharing violet butterfly tea made on a spirit stove with all-comers in my scruffy uninstagrammable she shed. (It will be a while 9 years down on a 10 year waiting list but that’s a consequence of moving to the city recently).

I'm going to have to mildly disagree with you on this point, DiaAssolellat.

Sexuality, as in being lesbian or gay, has a significance in how a person is, and is in society. That has changed over the centuries and around the world - in this part of the world we no longer have to hide our identity for fear of death, whereas there are places in the world where being lesbian or gay still results in a death sentence, whether judicial or just plain murder.

But there is still a difference in being lesbian or gay, it's not just who we sleep with, it ranges from assumptions in everyday conversations, to being sidelined by gender ideology, to being declared 'sinful', and even to being physically attacked for being lesbian or gay - that still happens, you know.

It's not unreasonable to look for expressions of lesbian or gay experience in the work of architects or painters or sculptors or garden designers, especially those who were operating at a time when they couldn't express themselves 100% openly.

But I completely share the rejection of the label 'queer', which is either an insult or a meaningless portmanteau word, or both.

I do care since the concept of my garden did begin with why are so many WLW women writers into gardening? Might add to the list Anne Lister, Willa Cather, Collette, Beatrix Havergal, Constance Spry, Alice B Toklas, Natalie Barney, Florence Yoch, Katherine Keshko, Edith Cooper and Katherine Bradley. And Charlotte Mendelssohn and Alys Fowler (among modern writers). Just for those interested (those not, nothing to see here)

Be a great subject for a gardening book.

"Fundamentally we look at gardens to appreciate their beauty AND draw meaning"

I would suggest for the vast majority of people the beauty of the garden IS the meaning. There is no other to draw. I'd say it's highly unusual for oeyto look at gardens and draw meaning about the queerness of it, it anything else.

Fair enough. I think I can live with being in a minority who think gardens are art and have meaning beyond beauty.

Apologies if this has already been said - I haven’t read the whole thread. Does this mean pollen is functionally tiny floating testicles?

@Motorina Depending on what exactly testicles means in that dictionary, yes, pollen is what produces the sperm cell. (Which, in the case of most of the plants you see, never swims around. Being plants, pollen has to be different. After it (he??) lands on the stigma, a pollen tube grows down to the neighbourhood of the 8-cell egg producing structure inside the flower. As I said, you want strange, bizarre, queer botany, it's right there!)

ArminTamzerian said "I would suggest for the vast majority of people the beauty of the garden IS the meaning. There is no other to draw."

What a bleak and nihilistic dismissal. I think @woollyhatter 's beautifully written post above shows how philosophy, curiosity, womanhood, humanity and gardening together make life so much more than mundane, offering delight, fun, contact with growing things and fresh air, and deeper meanings if you want them, by visiting a garden.

And if you don't want deeper meanings, then don't bother with them. But don't try and claim that nobody wants them.

I LOVE that enormous basin - it is wonderful!

Isn't it fantastic?

@Shortpoet
Its the difference between someone describing something delightful with humour, and someone creating distance by obscuring meaning and ultimately not saying anything much at all.
YES!
I read something the other day about 'mere empty technique' and thought, yup, that sums up a lot of modern academia/ luvvie-dom. I noticed some years ago a tendency in the social sciences to wrap really simple ideas up in insanely complex wanky, academic language, ideally 6 paragraphs of it, when the idea could be condensed down to a couple of simple sentences in everyday language.

No grants nor kudos in that, however.

Don't worry ridiculous. Nihilistic? Please!

The vast majority of people look at gardens and think: what a lovely garden. What nice plants, what pretty flowers. They don't look at a gardens and say, gosh, this garden really speaks to me about the juxtaposition of god and man and the nature of modern sexuality, Vis a Vis queer theory.

Get a bloody grip.

ArminTamzerian yes* *ok. I apologise for saying that your comment was nihilistic. I should've just stuck to the fact that I don't agree with you.

And please, don't tell me to get a bloody grip. We're talking about thinking here, about art and ideas. Your thoughts are not my thoughts.