Q is for Garden

Tending the histories of queer cultivation

Jenny Chamarette

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9781526197337
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526197344
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

A bold, tender exploration of how queerness and nature entwine – and what happens when we step beyond the binaries that fence us in.

There is a Q in garden, but you can't always see it.

When Jenny Chamarette faced a devastating health crisis, they found themselves unmoored from the rules of gender, sexuality and productivity. In a small South London garden, Jenny began to imagine another way of living: porous, unruly, rooted in the lessons of soil and plant life. Gardens, like identities, are usually bounded – but what if those limits can be re-drawn?

Blending memoir and cultural criticism, this book asks whether the categories we inherit – colonial, patriarchal, conventions of sexuality and gender – still serve us, or whether they confine us. From illness and recovery to queer love and ecological wonder, Q is for Garden invites readers to reimagine how we inhabit land, culture and each other.

An eloquent work of nature writing and queer thought, Q is for Garden digs into the rich history of queer gardeners, botanists, artists and agriculturalists. It offers a hopeful vision of belonging, if we are curious enough to unearth it.

Table of contents

• cover
• half title
• title page
• copyright
• contents
• prologue: broken earth
• introduction
• water::question?::autumn
• earth::radix::winter
• air::change::spring
• fire::rage::summer
• epilogue: verbena, knotweed, biopolitics (on queer art ecologies)
• notes
• list of illustrations
• acknowledgements
• index