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

I didn't say they were. I said the majority look at gardens and see pretty flowers, not a thesis on lesbian gardeners or the nature of queer botany.
I'm very confident that a vox pop trawl of any UK high street would back me up ..and what's more, you know you agree.

Often obfuscation to avoid revealing a lack of insight and/or comprehension and/or meaningful and original thought.

Some complex ideas do benefit from careful, expanded, and even difficult language. But some see only the complexity and assume meaning is hidden in the tricksy language itself, rather than the ideas the language points to.

Then some try to offer a smokescreen of obscure and opaque language as a simulacra of profundity.

Finger pointing at moon, I suppose.

I think a lot of people recognise the historical context of gardens - formal knot gardens; highly controlled landscapes; orderly bedding-out; subtly coloured deep borders; conifers and heathers; native plants mixed in with cultivars. All coming in at specific dates. It doesn't take much of leap to add that to what was going on historically and see how the gardens are reflecting cultural shifts.

Derek Jarman wrote about gardening during the AIDS pandemic and linked that to his choice of location between a remote shingle-spit beside a power station. Did Christopher Lloyd's sense (never written about, very reticent on personal topic) of being othered when growing up give him the courage to make the leap of digging out the rose garden and planting terribly unfashionable and brightly clashing dahlias? Probably.

Making beautiful gardens is difficult, making innovative, novel, exciting, gardens even more so.

I put the Queer Botany salad into ChatGPT Mini, asking it for an explanation, and was given the two options

Response 1
The text describes a project called Queer Botany, which explores the connections between queerness and nature through the lens of queer ecology. This interdisciplinary approach combines queer theory, which examines issues of identity and power, with eco-criticism, which critiques the relationship between culture and the environment. Queer Botany focuses on how the LGBTQ+ community interacts with plant life and aims to uplift marginalized voices within both environmental and outdoor spaces, encouraging more inclusive and diverse representations in these fields.

Response 2
This text describes a project called "Queer Botany," which explores the intersection of LGBTQ+ identity (queerness) and nature, specifically focusing on plants. The project is grounded in "queer ecology," a framework that combines queer theory (which challenges traditional understandings of gender, sexuality, and identity) with eco-criticism (which examines the relationship between literature, culture, and the environment).
Queer Botany emphasizes how LGBTQ+ individuals connect with the natural world, particularly plants, and aims to amplify marginalized voices within both the environmental movement and outdoor spaces. The project seeks to challenge dominant narratives in these areas and promote more inclusive and diverse representations of both nature and LGBTQ+ people.

I was asked which response I preferred. Erm....

I think, perhaps, what the gardener is trying to achieve is a space where LGB and TQ+ people won't be afraid of visiting, will feel positively singled out as special, protected guests. Like a gay bar but garden-y?

For those who have thinky thoughts when they garden or visit gardens here is a potted, subjective and entirely non-comprehensive reading list of women writers who have written extremely well on their gardens.

Alys Fowler (late blooming lesbian) memoir suffused with how to read deeply into our surrounding environment, Hidden Nature.

Charlotte Mendelssohn I love her satirical novels of North London stereotypes but love more her love letter to her garden, Rhapsody in Green.

Mirabel Osler, A Gentle Plea for Chaos. I eked this one out one chapter every bedtime.

The Virago Book of Women Gardeners. My starting point and a great anthology. Good place to find my garden writers you might like.

Katherine Swift, The Morville Hours. If I over think, this woman takes it to a different level designing her garden around a book of hours in the field of her leased house in Shropshire.

Alice Vincent, Rootbound where size isn’t everything and a young woman flailing at adulting looks to her balcony to steady her.

Penelope Lively, A Life in the Garden. Well look at the author, nuff said.

Eleanor Perenyi, Green Thoughts. Elegantly wrought random musings about garden history, plants and anything horticulturally related that went on in her head.

Will trade for reading on the biological weirdness of botany and the animal visitors to gardens. I need more than seed catalogues to sustain me now the frosts have arrived.

I think, perhaps, what the gardener is trying to achieve is a space where LGB and TQ+ people won't be afraid of visiting, will feel positively singled out as special, protected guests. Like a gay bar but garden-y?

Because Kew Gardens is so terrifically and terrifyingly "straight" & unwelcoming for those who id as "queer"? 😁😂😂

A lot of descriptions of art projects in general are full of pretentious bollocks. Just go to the Tate, you'll see tons of it.

If you don't relate to it, you just walk on by.

"If you don't relate to it, you just walk on by"

Or, you could discuss what it might mean - which is what is going on here.

Surely it's not a case of either - you whole heartedly understand the description/ info provided, nod, and go about your day

Or

You scratch your head bemused... and go about your day.

Can't we have other options? Sounds very...binary

Nowt so queer as folk.

I am so tired of the pretence that lgb ( or more accurately, plusTQetcbollox, it's never about the gays anymore, that's old hat) are afraid of spaces and need safe ones, removed somehow from real life. Other gardens are just so terrifying, we're so afraid of visiting, we need to be praised and special even in a goddam GARDEN. Christ, spare me.

woollyhatter · For those who have thinky thoughts ..

'Thinky thoughts' is great😄

I am reading a really interesting book on hedges at the moment. By John Wright. A sort of slant history of the UK landscape, so far - hunting, enclosure, etc.

And I have my eye on one about fungi - the Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake.

Don't discuss, don't question, don't critique? Not ever?

It's all wank.

Moving on ... I like the eclectic offerings from several pps on their reflections, research interests, book recommendations, and interesting discussions. Comments like the one above from PrimalLass simply serve to shut down responses. I think that is unhelpful at best. I have never considered the idea of queer botany before. Whether or not I agree with the concept, the discussions have sparked a lot of reflection for me.

I suppose like many others, I kind of take gardens and gardening for granted. There they are, you can walk past them, maybe explore them, you can go in and experience them. I love Kew Gardens actually. Reminds me of my childhood. I'm so old that you had to pay tuppence or something when you visited.

There's a garden in Gloucestershire I like visiting. It has a collection of ancient apples, grown sideways along wires, a maze, a folly, a lake, and often, sculptures scattered around. It has structures made of twigs and creatures carved from wood. Nobody tells me what I ought to think about while I am in it. It's peaceful, there's a lot to look at, it's a nice place to go with friends.

As an over- thinker, and a chronic failure as a gardener, I enjoy seeing what other people do and make in their gardens, and will usually reflect on it at the time and then much later. Somehow the pace of a garden calms my hectic thoughts.

I appreciate this thread, and enjoy the reflections, ideas and discussions around what 'queer botany' means, or not, as the case might be. I don't think there is a definitive answer, which to me, is a good thing.

Yep fungi seem to be the most underrated organism in terms of the role they have in soil structure. Funny to think that it has taken some fifty years from no dig permaculture ideas for the science to begin to have insight into how fungal and microbial systems affect how trees communicate and soil fertility is improved. Will put the Sheldrake on my reading list. We seem to be only scratching the surface of it.

I suppose like many others, I kind of take gardens and gardening for granted. There they are, you can walk past them, maybe explore them, you can go in and experience them. I love Kew Gardens actually. Reminds me of my childhood. I'm so old that you had to pay tuppence or something when you visited

One of the loveliest features of the lock down Gardener’s World was the snippets that the viewers contributed due to the restricted filming possibilities for the BBC. It was soothing watching those lucky enough to have a little outdoor space talk about what it meant to them.

And then the boom in houseplants at the time definitely made me look at an aspidistra with more appreciation. I am still a borderline houseplant assassin sadly but I admire those who can turn their homes into indoor oases.

If you like fungi, then Tim Hayward did a great radio series about them:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00132xn

Meanwhile, I’ve discovered that you can be a Professor of Inhuman Geography and that geology is racist.

Who knew.

I've also read that, according to Professors of Thinky Thoughts, mushrooms can communicate with each other.

I briefly wondered what mushrooms would say to each other, but then realised that they probably tell each other jokes - 'Hey, I'm a fungi!'
I'll get my coat.....😏

Wait until you see what slime molds can do …

phys.org/news/2022-01-virtual-slime-mold-subway-network.amp

They're good. But I imagine that mycelium and fungi are more significant ...?

That's quite an extrapolation from what I said 😂

How so? We're discussing something here, and you're telling us we shouldn't.

Comments like the one above from PrimalLass simply serve to shut down responses.

A comment that came from working in a botany-aligned job. They are desperate to rainbow wash the colonial slant to plant hunting that went on.

Garden writing and history is interesting. Calling plants queer is all wank.