Thinking Allowed

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Thinking Allowed: Garden Utopias

Garden Utopias

BBC Radio 4 - Thinking Allowed, Garden Utopias

Garden Utopias: from the suburban privet hedge to guerrilla gardening.

Garden Utopias: Laurie Taylor peers behind the privet hedge to discover the dreams which inspired suburban greenery. Also, the promise of allotments and guerrilla gardening.

Garden Utopias: Michael Gilson, Associate Fellow of the School of Media, Arts and Humanities, University of Sussex, takes Laurie Taylor behind the privet hedge, to explore the suburban garden and the beautification of Britain. How did millions of British people develop an obsession with their own cherished plot of land? Although  stereotyped as symbols of dull, middle class conformity, these gardens were once seen as the vanguard of progressive social change, a dream of a world in which beauty would be central to all of our lives. 

Also, JC Niala, anthropologist, allotment historian and writer, discusses 36 months of fieldwork on allotment sites and guerrilla gardened streets across Oxford  and suggests these are places where urban gardeners imagine, invent, and produce a hopeful future within their city.

Producer: Jayne Egerton

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