Introduction
When crossing national boundaries, homes and gardens, parks and plazas, neighborhoods, and landmarks are some areas that immigrants leave behind. When these material anchors are missing, they can leave children feeling bewildered and alienated. Some people build a new home for themselves based on their memories of a place (Gerodetti, & Foster, 2016). This virtual art depicts how immigrants adapt to their new surroundings by developing, customizing, and using home gardens.
Immigrant Adaptation Using Home Gardens
A garden is special because it is a powerful setting where human life can occur independently of space, time, or culture. This interest in gardens, gardening practices, and gardening memories and experiences has grown recently (Gerodetti, & Foster, 2016). Research on gardens has established a link between the restorative experience of gardens and psychological well-being experience that helps recovery from daily stress, anxiety, and fatigue.
Gardens conjure images of beauty, comfort, and nourishment in the onlooker’s minds. Roots can be found in the gardens, believed to be either a luxury or a necessity (Gerodetti, & Foster, 2016). Growing Cultures is an excellent example of the gardens of immigrants settled in the province of Ontario. Vince Pietropaolo designed the following image to represent the garden tools and artifacts.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the immigrants in their role as gardeners, change their physical surroundings by incorporating natural and cultural elements. Migrant participants’ specific practices contribute to their individual and social identities by reaffirming connections to their places of origin. The embodied and affective-sensory memories attached, and adapting to new food-growing landscapes. However, all gardening practices can be said to be part of imagining the landscape. Some immigrants are strongly linked to diasporic groups and local farming customs and traditions by their desire to cultivate a certain variety of vegetables. Thus, their developing practices contribute to established and migrant groups’ cultural environments.
Reference
Gerodetti, N., & Foster, S. (2016). “Growing foods from home”: food production, migrants, and the changing cultural landscapes of gardens and allotments. Landscape Research, 41(7), 808-819.