I first read Jamaica Kincaid’s My Garden (Book) in that feverish summer of 2020. Alys Fowler had shared a snippet of the book on her IG stories about Joseph Banks that caught my attention.
I managed to get hold of a copy, second hand online, which at the time was no mean feat as no one seemed to have it in stock then.
It was revelatory to read someone talking about gardening, gardens, plants, theft, appropriation and colonialism in such a blunt and easy manner - so used was I to an evasiveness and a pretence of politeness in English gardening. A politeness that seemed to involve pretending that gardening and gardens aren’t political.
I was disappointed when I realised I was going to miss Kincaid speak in person at the Charleston Festival of the Garden this summer so I’m grateful that Alice Minney, who did attend, agreed to write up her experience of the event, which you can read below.
(If you’re unfamiliar with Kincaid, I found this recording from the 2014 Chicago Humanities Festival where she speaks about her life and writing an interesting watch/listen.)
Jamaica Kincaid at the Charleston Festival of the Garden, by Alice Minney
It has been a windy day in Lewes. I’m here in the grounds of Charleston with friends for the annual Festival of the Garden. We have all been entertained by the noise of the wind blowing into microphones and the sight of butterflies mastering the gale. But by the evening the sun has come out just as I am walking through the garden to attend a talk by Jamaica Kincaid, the celebrated writer and gardener.
Charleston was famously home to artist Vanessa Bell who came here with her lover, Duncan Grant. They were frequently visited by the other members of the Bloomsbury group, including Virginia Woolf, Vanessa’s sister. The house is known, not only for its association with the celebrated group of writers, painters and makers, but also for the way it was painted and decorated with patterns on doors, walls and fireplaces, transforming every surface into a canvas. The garden was a muse for many of these paintings and the relationship between the house and garden has brought many visitors to this location over the decades.
There is much anticipation for the evening’s talk amongst the gardening folk here. Jamaica Kincaid is an Antiguan-American writer who is known for her insightful and thought-provoking work on the themes of colonialism, gender, and the environment. She deftly explores how gardening can be a site of both colonisation and resistance.
There’s a hush as Kincaid and Claire Ratinon, a food grower and writer who is in conversation with Kincaid for this evening’s talk, take to the stage. Ratinon begins by describing how Kincaid’s work has “punctuated her life” and how she first came to it at university, to which Kincaid coyly says, “I’m just so ancient.” Within seconds she demonstrates her ability to disarm and captivate the audience. There are many moments such as this, bringing us along into the conversation. Little chuckles contrast with sharp, direct statements, unexpected turns are made, keeping us on our toes.
Kincaid talks of her writing journey, which began in her childhood in Antigua. She tells us an anecdote of her ability to talk before she could walk, describing herself as a chatterbox. Her mother, a keen reader, something quite unusual for the time, taught her to read as a way of keeping her occupied. “I just learnt to read through words and piecing together,” she says of the process. My dyslexic brain resonates with this immediately, having experienced words as shapes and forms. Words as things. Where I put the words together in the form of calligraphy and drawing, Kincaid pieces hers together to make stories. She was still “an annoyance” even after learning this skill, so her mother sent her to school at the age of three. As five was the youngest that children were allowed to attend she was told to tell the teachers she was five years old. “Your first lie,” says Ratinon, to which Kincaid replies, “My first fiction, my first encounter with fiction.”
Clearly a bright child, she was able to read all the books at school and was soon getting into repeated trouble. At the age of seven, as punishment for her behaviour, she had to copy out books One and Two of Paradise Lost. Rather than being punishment Kincaid identifies this as the point where she became a writer.
On her seventh birthday, she was gifted an Oxford English Dictionary by her mother which she read like a book. This, she says, along with the King James Version of the Bible, is the biggest stylistic influence on her writing.
You can feel the relationship Kincaid has with words in the way she speaks. There is no fluff, no arrogance or big elaborate words. The intention and her skill for storytelling are captivating.
Kincaid knows exactly who she is talking to and her audience on this particular occasion. She starts talking of her mother, who was from Dominica, but then breaks into a small chuckle. “I am laughing 'cause I am looking at your faces and… how am I to tell you about Dominica.” Sitting on the front row I turn around to see the audience, who look blankly. They don’t seem to follow.
She continues with a brief history of colonisation by the British and the French. At one point she pauses to ask the audience, “you know all of this, right?” Again there is no noise of affirmation or acknowledgement. Sitting in the barn at Charleston, I think what an interesting setting it is for Kincaid's conversation at the intersection of writing and gardening. Whilst the Bloomsbury group are celebrated for their writing and liberal politics, some members of the group have been accused of racism. Virginia Woolf, one of the most famous members, for example, used racist language in her writing. In her essay "Three Guineas”, she wrote about the "black and brown races" as being "less developed" than white people.
When Kincaid was once ordered to read the book Pride and Prejudice. She recalls this encounter she made in the writing of a delphinium. “A delphinium. I had never seen a delphinium. I also had never seen a daffodil until the age of 17... I hated daffodils for a long time, they were so wrapped up in the colonial business of teaching us things that had no relevant, especially plants, meaning to us.”
Both Claire Ratinon and Jamaica Kincaid have talked extensively in their work about how people have used plants to colonise and control and that when we garden we are continuing this conversation. The garden is a political space - one saturated with the politics of where plants have come from in the past. I particularly enjoyed Kincaid’s comment on bringing politics into the garden, “Even the garden of Eden has its political arrangement, so when someone says, ‘don’t bring politics into it’, they’re saying ‘shut up’, as if politics is a dirty word... If someone says this, just walk away, or spit on them.”
Ratinon reads a piece from Kincaid’s book, In My Garden (Book), about a visit to Sissinghurst, the country castle and gardens in Kent. She writes, “I suspect that the source of my antipathy to Sackville West and her garden is to be found in her observation of the garden, in the way she manages to be oblivious of the world. For the fact is that the world cannot be left out of the garden.”
One of my biggest takeaways from the talk was Kincaid’s words on memory. To lose one's memory is the worst possible thing to happen. She has collected memories and plants from all over the world, notably her three-week trek through the Himalayan land of Nepal which is the basis of her travel memoir, Among Flowers. When asked what brought her to embark on such an exploration, she states that she was compelled by curiosity. After the talk, I purchased this book and now I have read about these travels I am astonished by how treacherous these adventures were and amazed at the compulsion and drive she had to populate her garden in Vermont with plants. I will not even try to summarise these adventures here, and can only urge you all to read this book for yourself. She ties back to memory after a tangent by saying that, at the time, these journeys weren't enjoyable but it feels like she was “storing them in a bank.”
In a previous interview, Kincaid once said, “When I’m writing, I think about the garden, and when I’m in the garden I think about writing. I do a lot of writing while putting something in the ground.” The garden is a symbol of resilience. It is a reminder that people can find ways to create beauty and hope. And through writing, Kincaid has been able to tell her stories of the garden and the complex relationship between writing, the words we choose to use and gardening.
Alice Minney is a gardener and process-led communication designer focusing on publication design, garden design and photography. In her practice, she explores how words alter our interactions and relationships with nature and how nature can enrich and inspire a creative practice.
@aliceeelizabeth | www.aliceminney.com
Alice is being paid for this article.
Photo credit: Sui Searle