The History of Gardening in North America, 1607-Present

The History of Gardening in North America, 1607 to the Present, examines the complex ways peoples across the North American continent have cultivated plants, insects, and animals from the beginning of English colonization to the present. It offers a narrative of the role of gardening in human history as well as an exploration of how gardens have incubated sweeping transformations in the history of non-human nature far beyond the garden plot. By examining gardens as both projections of human needs, desires, and aspirations, as well as landscapes of unexpected transformation and conflict, the course offers an accounting of a long and complex 'conversation' between humans and the soil, insects, and animals that have constituted and created gardens.