DECOLONIZING GARDENS














Where do our knowledges and practices related to plants and nature come from? How do we dismantle  dominant philosophies that advocate a scientific view of the world , detached from the earth and living things? How can we talk about the myriad life forms on Earth, using their own language and history? How can we distance ourselves from nomenclatures and contexts imbued with an imperialist colonialism? What role can plants play in the recovery of forgotten knowledges? Can we blur the contours of institutionalized knowledges so as to highlight other approaches – more intuitive and humbler ways of doing things and of seeing the world? What can we do with contaminated and damaged land? How can we let life spread in places that have been neglected?     
















Miijim: Food as Relations roundtable: “Gardens as Art as Relations,” Finding Flowers Project, February 23, 2021.

2
List of tinctorial plants for Jardin Daniel A. Séguin in Saint-Hyacinthe, Annie France Leclerc, 2021.

3
Tinctorial plants, Annie France Leclerc, 2020–21.
4
Garden of Our Lady Plan gardening guide, 1937.

5
How to Start a Mary Garden in Philadelphia gardening guide, 1965.

6
Quotation by Erika DeFreitas in Migrating the Margins: Circumlocating the Future of Toronto Art (2019), 64.
7
Lists of plants bearing the name “Virgin Mary,” Erika DeFreitas.

8
Digital drawings from Hannah Claus’s project interlacings, 2015.

9
Auction sale record for a Hammersmith carpet designed by William Morris and John Henry Dearle, Christie’s Auction House, c. 1890.