Garden Stories: Auto/biography, Gender and Gardening

Abstract

Life writing in the form of a single garden story is used in this paper to examine the garden as a powerful theme in gendered leisure. I explore the ways in which garden narratives in the form of auto/biography can represent new identities in everyday life. One women's life story is (re)told; about her childhood, her home and family, and her work in the garden. I conclude that life stories contained in the Mass Observation Archive (big and small) are useful ways of studying gendered lives to gain deeper understandings of the uses and meanings of leisure spaces in and around the home.