The Department of Anthropology at the University of Kent are conducting a project called ‘the ethnobotany of British home gardens: diversity, knowledge and exchange,’ which aims to produce an inventory of the biological resource and their use from different kinds of home gardens in Kent.
This will include not only home gardens, but the allotments in Canterbury and Whitstable as well.
The study will also take an account of the social networks along which plants and knowledge are exchanged; and describe the level to which gardening and garden produce can contribute financially to the household.
The need to know green
Professor Roy Ellen, the project director, said: “This project aims to better understand the levels of agrobiodiversity found in home gardens – that is those gardens intimately linked to individual households. For example, we want to know where seed and other plant material comes from, whether it is purchased or obtained informally, who gives and receives it; who receives vegetable produce, and the economic scale of such exchanges. We wish to learn how people learn to become good home gardeners. Whilst biological diversity in itself is important, so are the skills and knowledge that maintain it.”
Colleague and fellow project director, Dr Simon Platten said: “Despite high rates of participation in gardening, and the significant research and development being undertaken by the horticulture industry, there is relatively little work on the basic social, cultural and ethnobotanical dimensions of home gardening. In short, we hope to be able to demonstrate scientifically the wider value of home gardens beyond the material worth of the land that they occupy.”
The Eden Project in Cornwall and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew have agreed to provide assistance where possible and will help with the dissemination of the project output.
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Date Published: September 27, 2007
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