Tending to the soil: autobiographical narrative inquiry of gardening

Abstract

This autobiographical narrative inquiry takes the reader alongside the lived experiences of one of the authors (Michael) with his family’s gardens and two community gardens in Edmonton (Heritage and Eco). By focusing on Michael’s story of gardening, the authors demonstrate the power of narrative inquiry (Clandinin, J., & Connelly, M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass) as an approach that tends to the descriptive and paradoxical dynamics of leisure practice by providing multiple narratives to dominant conceptualizations of gardening. The institutional, community and personal narratives of gardening that wove in and through Michael’s experiences of gardening are used to show how leisures are polythetic constructions situated in contexts with people, cultures and communities (Fox, K., & Klaiber, E. (2006). Listening for a leisure remix. Leisure Sciences, 28(5), 411–430). As the narratives in this article illustrate, gardeners continually negotiate multiple landscapes and stories of gardening. Adding the rich and multivariate experiences of gardeners amongst the meta-narratives of gardening is to enrich, complicate and highlight the diversity of lives lived.

Ce récit autobiographique relie le lecteur avec les expériences vécues par l’un des auteurs (premier auteur) dans des jardins de patrimoine et écocommunautaires à Edmonton. En se fournissant de multiples récits de conceptualisations dominantes de jardinage parvenu par le premier auteur, les auteurs démontrent la puissance de l’analyse narrative (Clandinin, J., & Connelly, M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass) comme une approche qui décrit la dynamique descriptive et paradoxale de cette pratique de loisirs. Les récits institutionnel, communautaire et personnel de jardinage qui sont tissés dans et à travers les expériences du premier auteur sont utilisés pour illustrer comment les loisirs sont des constructions polythétiques situées dans des contextes socioculturels et communautaires (Fox, K., & Klaiber, E. (2006). Listening for a leisure remix. Leisure Sciences, 28(5), 411–430). Comme les récits dans cet article illustrent, les jardiniers négocient continuellement multiples paysages et histoires de jardinage. Ignorer ces expériences riches et multivariées du jardinage est de faire taire les moments d’inconfort, de la dissidence et des alternatives à la diversité des vies vécues.

Keywords:

• narrative inquiry
• community gardens
• community
• leisure narratives

Mots-clés:

• récit autobiographique
• jardins
• jardin communautaire
• contes

Notes

1. The use of researchers’ and participants’ first names is integral to narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) as a relational form of inquiry and experience.

2. Due to confidentiality, all names of gardens and people from this research are pseudonyms. The authors have used broad references to identify cultural groups to protect the anonymity of gardens and gardeners involved.

3. The authors are attentive to how Kim and Michael create commonalities through shared experiences as white affluent Canadians being shaped with larger Canadian and western meta-narratives of gardening. These dynamics are vital to address as leisure research tends to and works with diverse cultures and frameworks.