CHAMARETTE, Jenny
Q is for Garden. Tending the histories of queer cultivation

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.

[publishers’ note]

Published by Manchester University Press, 2026
Essays / Ecology / Queer Culture / Health