Digging for sanctuary: The garden as a contact sphere

Abstract

The European ideal of connectivity across national borders is haunted by a dissolving of boundaries and categories. Public crises are carried into private spaces, generating an almost omnipresent anxiety exacerbated by various media. Almost omnipresent? Yes: for one space, the garden, tenaciously resists the maelstrom of late modernity, or appears to do so in reassuring ways. This article analyses how the multiple European crises are addressed in and by recent mediatisations of gardening. Drawing on selected Anglophone gardening programmes, I argue that the mediascape of gardening represents a relational ‘contact sphere’ where Otherness is negotiated. Focusing on regaining a sense of control and autarky, infotainment programmes on gardening have grown into interactive platforms which disseminate images and practices which contribute to a sustainable vision of Europe, while addressing seemingly uncontrollable problems of change, identity and emotion, threats to human health, and non-transparent food production.