This week, in honor of Labor Day just passed, we venture into the world of garden preservation and history through the lens of spaces of incarceration, and how these can help all of us consider, with clearer eyes, the great diversity of ways in which the word Garden is used. We’re in conversation with garden historian and researcher Dr. Elizabeth Lara, who reminds us that there are many shades of green.
Elizabeth is a Cultural Geographer looking at the role and uses of gardens in spaces of incarceration – historic and contemporary, and what this might teach us as gardeners and as a society as we look forward and back. She earned her doctorate through extensive research at Old Mission Santa Barbara, the Gardens of Alcatraz, and the Manzanar National Historic Site– one of 10 sites in the U.S. of Japanese internment during World War II. She also conducted research in contemporary settings of incarceration, including work with the Insight Garden Program, which began its work at San Quentin Penitentiary.
Elizabeth's past 5 years considering the prismatic role of gardens in spaces of incarceration has been an intense period of study, analyzing what stories gardens tell and what stories we ask gardens to grow over - for better and for worse.
Following her master's work in part at the Gardens of Alcatraz, and having encountered the role of gardens in contemporary prisons, as she was proposing the framework for her doctorate, Elizabeth frequently had this nagging sense of how little the role of gardens in spaces of incarceration was being considered in garden history writ large, and how there was a vast history of stories not being told, voices not being heard which might offer insights to the garden world – and that society as a whole might benefit from as well.
This week's conversation is a long and deep one, looking at gardens in ways I had not considered previously and you can hear both Elizabeth and me feeling our way along how to talk about these ideas and insights with the greatest accuracy and respect. I hope this conversation grows you as much as it grew me.
Enjoy!
You can follow Elizabeth's work on Instagram:
All photos by and courtesy of Elizabeth Lara. All rights reserved.
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JOIN US again next week, when we’re joined by Jarod K. Anderson, AKA the Cryptonaturalist. His new book, Something in The Woods Loves you, which both chronicles and considers the role of the natural world in our lives, to our mental health, and right perspective as to our meaning and place in the world. That's right here, next week.
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Thinking out loud this week...
In honor of Labor Day here in the US – I want to shout out to the garden laborers growing our world – from picking our food to tidying our parks to helping us to tend to our green spaces the world over – we see you, we value you, we applaud your labors.
May we improve this recognition as we move into a future that truly recognizes all the ways in which the labors of plants and the best of our plantspeople make our lives not only possible but pleasurable.
On another note, the concept of paradoxes keeps coming up in this conversation, doesn’t it? The paradox at the heart of what it means to be a gardener…to have a garden. Are we enclosing ourselves or opening ourselves? Our we incarcerating nature, or being her ally?
Uncomfortable and complicated to consider, but it’s conversations like this one that make me love what I do. I can feel my head and heart growing and stretching as I try to follow Elizabeth’s work and all that it provokes in me and all that it asks me to interrogate – and the role of my garden and gardening in this world.
Keep growing!
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The CP team includes producer and engineer Matt Fidler, with weekly tech and web support from Angel Huracha, and this summer we're joined by communications intern Sheila Stern. We’re based on the traditional and present homelands of the Mechoopda Indian Tribe of the Chico Rancheria. Original theme music is by Ma Muse, accompanied by Joe Craven and Sam Bevan.
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