Q is for Garden: Tending the Histories of Queer Cultivation by Jenny Chamarette

A bold, tender exploration of how queerness and nature entwine – and what happens when we step beyond the binaries that fence us in. There is a Q in garden, but you can’t always see it.
 
When Jenny Chamarette faced a devastating health crisis, they found themselves unmoored from the rules of gender, sexuality and productivity.

In a small South London garden, Jenny began to imagine another way of living: porous, unruly, rooted in the lessons of soil and plant life. Gardens, like identities, are usually bounded – but what if those limits can be re-drawn? Blending memoir and cultural criticism, this book asks whether the categories we inherit – colonial, patriarchal, conventions of sexuality and gender – still serve us, or whether they confine us. From illness and recovery to queer love and ecological wonder, Q is for garden invites readers to reimagine how we inhabit land, culture and each other.

An eloquent work of nature writing and queer thought, Q is for garden digs into the rich history of queer gardeners, botanists, artists and agriculturalists. It offers a hopeful vision of belonging, if we are curious enough to unearth it.
 
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'A generous and profoundly creative study of how all forms of life can learn to flourish in hostile climates.’ - Octavia Bright
 
'Vital, generative and tender. Reading this book has given me hope.’ - Nancy Campbell,