Prior to presenting her work at the AGLSP Conference in Vancouver, BC, in the fall of 2008, Narcisa Medianu had her piece, “Community Gardens and the Environmental Ethics of Urban Landscapes,” published in Confluence. It combines her work and her interests as it examines the role gardens play in representing nature as well as the argument against viewing cultivated gardens as inherently “natural.” During the conference she took a small group of attendees on a tour of a few community gardens in Vancouver. She was interviewed by Assistant Editor Krista Bailey in August, 2009 after her return from a wilderness camping trip.
Are you a gardener? If so, since when?
I’ve been a gardener for many years. Although I grew up in a big city, our house in Transylvania, Romania had a large garden, where we used to grow vegetables and flowers, along with chickens, rabbits and the occasional piglet.
Are you part of a community garden? How did you become interested in researching and writing about community gardens?
When I moved to Vancouver, in an apartment on the East side, I started missing the garden and looked for opportunities to share my interest in gardening with other people. Fortunately, there are a large number of community gardens in my neighborhood; some have been around for over 25 years, and new ones are sprouting across the neighborhood. The community garden where I go most often has an extensive common area, where work parties are organized at the end of each month. It is a great opportunity to meet people and learn more about organic gardening and environmental ethics.
You discuss the theme of cultivated vs. wild in your piece. How do such relationships help us exist in harmony with each other and with nature? In what ways might such dualistic themes be counterproductive to leading a balanced life?
I don’t believe gardening and wilderness are as opposed to each other as we often tend to believe. The dualism wilderness/civilization has a long history, and is founded on the belief that intervention in nature is inevitably wrong. Wilderness narratives challenge our drive to conquer and transform nature while promoting a sense of guilt associated with the preoccupation for harvesting and beautifying nature.
There is no question: we need to preserve wilderness in order to survive as humans. We need to have a place of retreat, a place to maintain a critical perspective on civilization. But, to the same extent, we need to build a solid ethic that will guide our interactions with our immediate surroundings and help us create a better and more sustainable life in the city, where most of us live. As Michael Pollan points out in his book about gardening (Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education), garden ethics will be necessarily anthropocentric, but the gardener’s conception of self-interest should be broad and enlightened.
How has an interdisciplinary approach helped in your study of community gardens?
I became interested in researching gardens while working on my Master’s degree in Liberal Studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. I believe gardens can only be studied with an interdisciplinary approach in mind. The garden is first and foremost a metaphor of our relation with nature, and, as such, it transcends our personal experience. To understand its multiple connotations, we have to follow the paths of philosophy, poetry, and religion, starting with the powerful symbol of the Garden of Eden – the symbol of victory over nature which is wild and void of intrinsic value.
The study of community gardens wouldn’t be complete or useful without emphasizing the need of a transformed environmental ethics based on interdisciplinary approach.
You have a degree in sociology and have worked in that field. How do you connect that discipline to your interdisciplinary work? Do you feel it has biased your approach or given you a firm foundation from which you can expand?
Indeed, my first Master’s degree is in Sociology, and I must say, I found the program in Liberal Studies at SFU equally challenging and rewarding. With age, one’s ways of thinking become set, and keeping one’s mind open to new ideas is challenging. Oftentimes, I was tempted to use the point of view I was most familiar with to argue for or against new ideas, and that can bias one’s approach. Once I was able to let go of the idea that I already know the correct answer, and how to get it, I have enjoyed immensely playing with different perspectives.
Are you working on a follow-up or on related research or pieces of writing?
Unfortunately, I am not currently working on any related research. I have just completed two very different extended essays necessary for my graduation in the Liberal Studies Program. However, I continue to be interested in any social movements that reclaim urban space, asserting “the right to the city” (to quote Henri Lefebvre) through spontaneous manifestations of solidarity (such as urban gardening, Critical Mass, neighborhood festivals, and so on).
