Politicising plants: Dwelling and invasive alien species in domestic gardens in Norway

Abstract

Qvenild, M., Setten, G. & Skår, M. 2014. Politicising plants: Dwelling and invasive alien species in domestic gardens in Norway. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography Vol. 68, 22–33. ISSN 0029-1951.

The article investigates how domestic gardeners in Oppland County, Norway, engage with plants and with ‘invasive alien species’ as defined by the national environmental authorities. The spread of invasive alien plants from domestic gardens may represent a threat to native biodiversity, and environmental authorities currently face a challenge in communicating this risk to domestic gardeners operating within their relatively autonomous garden spaces. The authors demonstrate how biodiversity politics and human–plant relationships meet, or fail to meet, in domestic gardens. Empirically, they draw on talking-whilst-walking interviews held with selected domestic gardeners, and they were inspired by Ingold's notion of dwelling in combination with more-than-human geography, which enabled them to analyse how, through embodied practices, domestic gardeners relate to plants as well as to the terms developed within natural science (i.e. alienness, nativeness, and invasiveness). The main finding is that gardeners in Oppland are not concerned about the geographical origin of garden plants, but rather focus on the plants' attributes, such as invasiveness and adaptability to a harsh climate. Insights into how the terminology used by environmental authorities corresponds to domestic gardeners' interaction with garden plants may provide input into the improvement of communication strategies directed towards domestic gardeners regarding invasive alien species issues.

Keywords:

• biodiversity politics
• domestic gardens
• invasiveness
• more-than-human geography
• native and alien species

Acknowledgements

We thank the Norwegian Biodiversity Information Center (NBIC) and GBIF-Norge for permission to reproduce their map as Fig. 1, and Stein Johnsen for producing Fig. 2.

Notes

1 From November 2010 to March 2011 the temperatures in the part of Oppland we focused on fluctuated between c.12 °C to −23 °C. Between April and September 2011 the temperatures fluctuated between 26 °C to c.1 °C. http://www.yr.no/place/Norway/Oppland/Lillehammer/Lillehammer/statistics.html (accessed 2011).

2 All interviews and the analysis were undertaken by Marte Qvenild.

3 Regulation to the Norwegian Nature Diversity Act (Government.no 2009), titled Forslag til forskrift innførsel og utsetting av fremmede organismer. When the Act's regulation on alien species finally enters into force, new standards will be enforced for planting and using alien material.