Infrasecular gardens: the embodiment of the sacred through multispecies intimacy

Abstract

A growing body of research highlights the potential of community gardens to offer moments of relaxation and opportunities for spiritual connection. Informed by (post)phenomenology, I employed a mixed-methods qualitative approach to explore the experiences of women interacting with community gardens in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. In this paper, I examine participants’ interconnectedness with the gardens’ environment, focusing on their relationship with non-humans. These interactions revealed how gardening can evoke symbolic narratives that help participants make sense of their lived experiences. Drawing on della Dora’s framework of infrasecular geographies, I argue that the intimacy between humans and more-than-human entities, particularly the plants, can facilitate experiences of the sacred. For some participants, this connection is transformative, relating both to existential reflection and to micro-scale political action addressing socio-environmental concerns. Through a feminist approach to sacred spaces, this paper offers a grounded account of how gardening can foster embodied sacred experiences and promote more responsible socio-ecological relationships in humans due to multispecies intimacy. In emphasizing the relational, affective and spiritual dimensions of gardening, this paper advances both vegetal geographies and feminist geographies of religion.