Suburban life and the boundaries of nature: Resilience and rupture in Australian backyard gardens

Abstract

Despite an academic shift from dualistic to hybrid frameworks of culture/ nature relations, separationist paradigms of environmental management have great resilience and vernacular appeal. The conditions under which they are reinforced, maintained or ruptured need more detailed attention because of the urgent environmental challenges of a humanly transformed earth. We draw on research in 265 Australian backyard gardens, focusing on two themes where conceptual and material bounding practices intertwine; spatial boundary-making and native plants. We trace the resilience of separationist approaches in the Australian context to the overlay of indigeneity/non-indigeneity atop other dualisms, and ..