Teetering Garden Memories

by Mariya Shcheglovitova, Ph.D.
College of Natural Resources, Utah State University 

This essay is a sensory recollection of personal experiences reflecting on daily work in an urban garden. It is guided by photographs I captured in the summers of 2018 and 2019. I do not present photographs in a chronological narrative structure; instead, I use writing and photographs as a performative multimedia practice of remembering. I experiment with “memory writing” that does not reproduce “the original experience as it was lived but is necessarily always constituted from a particular time and place and discursive frame” (Gannon, 2006). The setting of these memories is Baltimore, Maryland, USA, and they are inevitably influenced by Baltimore’s geographies of disinvestment and segregation. Against a background of uneven development, I present my garden memories as snapshots that explore the roles of senses, bodies, and decay in producing urban food landscapes and garden legacies. I begin by Positioning myself, other gardeners, and the garden, and then I describe memories of three garden processes: Planting, Picking, and Rotting. I conclude with two sections reflecting on Remembering and Legacy.

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Editor's Note: This article was originally published in June 2021.

Suggested citation:

Shcheglovitova, Mariya. 2021. “Teetering Garden Memories.” Sensorium, November 2. Accessed [download date]  Accessed September 9, 2023. http://cultureandagriculture.americananthro.org/2021/11/teetering-garden-memories/.