Class, Taste and Gardening - A Taste for Gardening: Classed and Gendered Practices - page 128

devoted to castigating working-class gardening practices, is almost mirrored in the
aesthetics dispositions of the middle-class gardeners I spoke to. The middle-class
garden aesthetic is comprised of a set of identifiable gardening characteristics, the
use of perennials, shrubs and trees in naturalistic arrangements for example, but it is
also comprised of aesthetics which are formed out of a will to reject working-class
practices . The conscious will to create untidy niches and to reject rockeries and
bedding plants show that the middle-class aesthetic disposition is formed out of acts
of symbolic violence; being untidy or rejecting particular plants were practices that
working-class gardeners simply lacked the confidence to perform.
Conclusion
This chapter argues that while the gardeners I studied were anchored to the ordinary
practices identified by Felski (2000), class located what gardening meant for them
and it made profound differences to the aesthetic practices they were able to generate.
Using the explanatory power of Bourdieu's theories, it argues that practices of social
distinction still abound in mundane cultural settings. For the working-class people
of this study, gardening was underpinned by the need to secure respectability and
this was manifest in the aesthetic practice of tidiness that pervaded the look of their
gardens. Lacking capital assets at the national level, they designed their gardens
using locally generated principles and acts of community garden giving were
awarded prominence. Higher modicums of capital for the middle-class gardeners,
on the other hand, meant that they had nationally legitimate competencies which
enabled them to design their gardens and develop an aesthetic using horticultural
and historical knowledges. In recognition that their capitals had currency beyond
the local, they sought to display, trade and reconvert their capitals. Already endowed
with respectability, their aesthetic principles were constructed out of a will to distance
themselves from undesirable working-class aesthetic practices. Savage (2000b)
argues that in contemporary culture, people no longer announce an identification
with class as a collective entity. In line with Savage's contention, the gardeners
of this study never claimed a classed identity based on their gardening practices.
However, as Savage (2000b) also argues, class is embedded in people's sense of self
value, it is recognised and used as a measuring device which acts to 'position' people
and it affects peoples' approach to others. In these senses this chapter argues that
class pervades both the garden as a site and gardening as a set of symbolic aesthetic
practices.
This topic is based on a small-scale study, which can make no wide claims in
terms of gardening practices and class. However, my subjects identified themselves
as relating to class based groups according to collective gardening practices and
aesthetics. Indeed, in this sense my findings tend to show the limitations of habitus
as a conceptual tool - since in so many respects, my data shows a good deal of
commonality in relation to how people use the garden as an identity marker. In an
important critical essay, Longhurst and Savage (1996) argue that in Distinction
Bourdieu is intent on seeking out variation in consumption practices, as opposed to
uncovering how 'commonality and solidarities are forged between people' (1996,