Mariam Pirbhai
Like plants, we, too, can be classified as native or non-native, invasive or non-invasive. Most of us here, in Canada, are non-native or “naturalized” citizens, so the question at the heart of the book is: how do we behave in the extended garden that is this land? Will we behave like the Common Buckthorn—an invasive species that acts like a bad neighbour, hogging space and light? Or can we cultivate a more reciprocal relationship with others—with the land?
Garden Inventories isn’t just a gardening book, rather, it’s a memoir, and a metaphor that explores an immigrant’s growing sense of belonging to Canada through its natural spaces. Can you describe your inspiration for this work?
This book is inspired by what plants and gardens can teach us about putting down roots. My family moved a lot during my childhood (from Pakistan to England, the United Arab Emirates, the Philippines and, eventually, Canada), which gave me the unique privilege of experiencing different kinds of gardens (and ideas about gardens) as they are shaped by a diverse variety of climates, geographies and even cultural histories. When I turned my attention to our garden in Waterloo, Ontario, I became quite fascinated with the way gardeners often try to recreate the gardens they remember, like a mothers’ garden, or even the gardens of our ancestors. I found this relationship between garden, land and identity quite intriguing, since it suggests that, with or without a garden, we are all connected to our natural environment—at least our memories and identities are intimately shaped by the land and landscape, and the garden often encapsulates this relationship in a deeply personal way.
What was the most difficult part of finding the right balance between research and personal memories in the book? What about achieving the right mix of humour against more sombre, thought-provoking moments?
Gardening makes good researchers of us all, because with every gardening season comes a new set of head-scratching challenges, a new set of wonders, and invariably a new learning curve. In hindsight, I think I approached the question of research with this in mind—namely, that I am learning about this land and place organically, one season at a time, one plant choice at a time, one walk—through suburbia, nature trails, woodlots, conservation areas—at a time. The personal sometimes rubs up against the factual insofar as I am also an émigré who carries with her other cultural ideas about what a garden should or should not look like. I was hoping to immerse the reader in a similar kind of tousle between entrenched (or inherited) and potentially “unsettling” (or competing) ideas about land, nature and identity.
And I certainly hope the book elicits a chuckle or two along the way. I think gardening is a very humbling activity, constantly calling attention to our fumbling attempts at control. We even tend to treat gardens as bounded and highly controlled spaces, when in reality nature does not give two hoots about fences and property lines. We all play lead roles in this special comedy of errors. For me, humour is the hand that walks the reader over to spaces of deeper reflection. The question of balance is a judgement best left to each reader.
How did you go about the task of curating several essays together and gathering them into one book? How did you decide the best way organize them?
I would hazard a guess that many books of nonfiction start with a central question or preoccupation and then branch out from there. My central preoccupation took the form of the ornamental “non-fruiting” fruit tree—a horticultural phenomenon I found myself quite bewildered by in the North American suburban garden. I started to read about horticultural practices in North America and this took me down other “garden paths,” so to speak, such as why our gardens and nurseries are filled with non-native species at the exclusion of native species.
These garden paths became chapters, such as the one about why a single flower (namely, the rose) should receive so much horticultural glory. Or my chapter on the North American obsession with the lawn. Or a chapter on my own garden as a constant work-in-progress. In the middle of the book is a chapter on “the cottage” because I felt I had to venture into Ontario’s “cottage country,” where questions about colonization, land, legacy, belonging and even tradition seem deeply intertwined. I positioned the cottage chapter in the middle of the book because it wrestles with how more recently-arrived émigrés, and especially people of colour, are often sandwiched between (and sometimes also excluded from) settler colonial and Indigenous narratives about this land. I wanted to explore this in-between space, and also what it means to garden in a land steeped in colonial constructs about nature and, by extension, the botanical. As much as we impose a structure on a book, sometimes the most fruitful patterns come about in organic or even accidental ways, and I think this is where some of the magic of creation happens. I guess the same could be said for a garden, and maybe even a book inspired by gardening.
What were the differences you found you had to make in your creative process towards writing Garden Inventories, compared to your novel Isolated Incident and other past work?
I’m more inclined to address the similarities across nonfiction and fiction since, at least for me, it is the similarities that capture some core aspects of my process. For instance, all of my creative work looks to research as a companion to the writing process. Research helps me move from fragmented ideas to more fulsome connections. For Isolated Incident, a novel exploring Islamophobia as it impacts Canadian Muslims, I found myself researching everything from how religious communities have responded to hate crimes in Canada and Europe, to the geology of rivers (the book has a river motif); this invariably filters down into the technical details, such as how to build a character study, or the kind of atmosphere I wish to create, or the kind of resolution I hope to achieve.
I think both fiction and nonfiction also call for an ethical pact with the reader and ourselves, though in slightly different ways. For the novel, these ethics often have to do with questions of representation, especially when we are venturing into alien or deeply sensitive territory, or into characters and contexts that are outside the realm of our own experience. For a work of nonfiction like Garden Inventories, I realized early on that my story is also my husband’s story and my siblings’ story and my late parents’ story and, because it’s concerned with land and place, my neighbours’ stories. I try to approach each writing project with that kind of intersubjectivity in mind.
Gardening has long been a powerful way for humans to connect with nature. What do you hope readers will understand or take away after reading Garden Inventories?
In this book, plants are a metaphor for people, and vice versa. We are all part of a larger ecosystem—social, cultural, national, botanical, biological. Like plants, we, too, can be classified as native or non-native, invasive or non-invasive. Most of us here, in Canada, are non-native or “naturalized” citizens, so the question at the heart of the book is: how do we behave in the extended garden that is this land? Will we behave like the Common Buckthorn—an invasive species that acts like a bad neighbour, hogging space and light? Or can we cultivate a more reciprocal relationship with others—with the land? And if one’s sense of place is not an arena for self-exploration, perhaps this might be a take-away of the book—what is to be gained from looking at the places we take for granted through another perspective—starting with something as small or seemingly insignificant as a garden.
What is your favourite plant or flower that you currently keep in your own garden?
As a gardener, I am always on the alert for new plants, be it through plant swaps, walks through the woods, independent research, or obsessive trips to the local nursery, so it’s hard to pin down a “favourite.” These days, I am more inclined to play favourites on the basis of a plant’s general disposition. For instance, a plant that provides year-round seasonal interest is one I would favour. An example would be the dogwood, a flowering shrub that offers fall colour and, come winter, paints a dramatic contrast to the snow-covered landscape with its scarlet-red or chartreuse branches. Similarly, any plant that attracts and sustains wildlife has a favourable disposition, from echinacea flowers to rose mallow to the common milkweed. I have come to realize, as a novice gardener, that I have been selecting plants with little to no thought about what I may be adding to, or even taking away from, the environment. Instead of the native Juneberry (Amelanchier), which is a prolific (and might I say, delicious) berry-producer, I might have planted something that is unpalatable or even toxic to native wildlife. So, now my favourite plants are those that not only bring me joy but also help sustain a healthy garden for everyone who takes up residence in it.