The World and the Garden: Ekphrasis and “Overterritorialization” in Jamaica Kincaid’s Garden Writing

The garden is often regarded as a feminine space of withdrawal. By contrast, this essay examines how Jamaica Kincaid envisions the garden not as a retreat from the world but as an opportunity to delve into the colonial histories of plants. Kincaid traces the twinned histories of botany and empire, highlighting how the botanic garden served as a laboratory for the development of plantation crops and therefore played a pivotal role in imperial and capitalist expansion. I concentrate on Kincaid’s use of ekphrasis, which reveals the many aesthetic, scientific, and colonial discourses that construct the garden as a both discursive and material space. Kincaid’s ekphrastic prose produces an effect of “overterritorialization,” in which loco-descriptive details do not provide the reader with a sense of place; rather, the overabundance of details overwhelms and even unsettles the reader. Kincaid’s garden writing thus shows us an alternative model of reading postcolonial environmental literature.

Spreading the Word: Garden Writing in the Sub-Tropics

This article examines local publications regarding horticulture, botany and garden design from the first 50 years of Queensland history. The primary aim was to critically review the documentary data with a focus on understanding designed landscapes. A secondary objective was to reveal the major historical figures responsible for writing about design and horticulture in general between 1859 and 1915. This article represents a summary of these sources and their authors, rather than a detailed discussion about the contents of these writings. Apart from newspapers, which devoted columns to horticultural and on occasion aesthetic matters, there were various other types of relevant publications on designed landscapes in early Queensland, including books, almanacs, nursery catalogues, gardening guides, essays, annual reports, journals and bulletins. The following review is arranged chronologically by publication date, and divided across two major eras: 1850s–1870s and 1880s–1910s. The biographical information provided with each author emphasises their design experiences and influence as part of the evaluation of the significance of these sources for the research.

The Roles of the University of Tennessee Gardens in a Public Horticulture Teaching Program

The University of Tennessee's undergraduate and graduate public horticulture concentrations are new programs designed to prepare individuals for careers in public horticulture that emphasize people and their education and enjoyment of plants. These new programs could not exist without the educational resources of the university's gardens. The gardens play a variety of roles in supporting faculty, undergraduate, and graduate students in these programs. The gardens serve as an outdoor laboratory and classroom and provide on-campus opportunities for the following teaching and learning activities: plant identification; plant photography; garden design; plant use; garden maintenance internships; special problem topics (e.g., production of annual variety trials, planting and labeling trials, writing garden literature, and creating interpretive displays); mapping and cataloging plants; and garden writing. Only through a university-based garden could opportunities to engage students in such meaningful learning experiences occur providing them with the competitive edge for entering the public horticulture field.