‘I love being in the garden’: enchanting encounters in everyday life

Abstract

This paper examines how the domestic garden is experienced as an intimate place in everyday life. With reference to Bachelard we seek to analyse prosaic pleasures and enchanting encounters that are revealed through multi-sensorial engagements and emotional attachments within the social/natural world. In particular we focus on three modalities of the everyday: work or tasks involved in gardening; that is, sensuous and embodied experiences explored through the notion of haptic perception; ‘cultivation’ in the sense of taking care of the garden, as well as caring for the self and others; and emotional attachments invoking body/place memories, especially of childhood gardens. To illustrate these themes we use garden narratives drawn from the Mass Observation Archive (MOA).