Migrant Gardens, Rogues Plants and Inner City Imaginaries in Sydney, Australia

Gardens have been identified as significant locations of place-making and environmental negotiation for migrant communities in Australia. Yet more nuanced understandings of migrant gardens (both in the sense of gardens that belong to migrants, and of gardens made by plants that migrate) still need to be developed.
We consider gardens made by humans and gardens made by rogue plants growing wild. Our research is situated in Marrickville, a suburb in the inner city of Sydney on the land of the Cadigal and Wangal people of the Eora nation. As the current home of a large population of migrants, Marrickville is as a contact zone between a Mediterranean and a tropical imaginary, between industrial landscapes and residential streets.
In this visually rich presentation we explore the garden from a transcultural point of view, as a contact zone between different orders of things. We ask: what kind of imaginary do plants create? What practices do plants engender travelling from one place to another? We present examples of migrant gardens in Marrickville from our photo-documentation and ethnography. We argue that migrant gardens need to be considered as a practice of constant translation, reinvention and ‘redistribution of the sensible’ (Ranciere 2004), one where plants, as well as humans, play a key role.