Paradise Transplanted: Migration and the Making of California Gardens

by Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo

Gardens are immobile, literally rooted in the earth, but they are also shaped by migration and by the transnational movement of ideas, practices, plants, and seeds. In Paradise Transplanted , Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo reveals how successive conquests and diverse migrations have made Southern California gardens, and in turn how gardens influence social inequality, work, leisure, status, and our experiences of nature and community. Drawing on historical archival research, ethnography, and over one hundred interviews with a wide range of people including suburban homeowners, paid Mexican immigrant gardeners, professionals at the most elite botanical garden in the West, and immigrant community gardeners in the poorest neighborhoods of inner-city Los Angeles, this book offers insights into the ways that diverse global migrations and garden landscapes shape our social world.

314 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just a thoroughly fascinating book that looks at Southern California’s historical reputation as a gardener’s paradise, the immigrants it has attracted—from inside and outside the U.S.—and how those migrants have shaped and been shaped by the act of tending plants there. Generations of first Japanese and then Latinos have staked their claim on the American dream by maintaining the fantasy yards of wealthier white home-owners, growing landscaping businesses and incidentally being blamed for the water-guzzling and gas-guzzling lawns seemingly necessary to make these homes the showpieces that maintain property values. On their own time, immigrants also take advantage of community gardens as places to reconnect with cultural food and medicinal traditions and their compadres. Community gardens can nurture their souls and renew neighborly ties. Finally, the authors looks at the Huntington’s Suzhou garden and how even immigrants can use elite landscapes to announce their arrival on the scene as philanthropic forces to be reckoned with. I won’t look at gardens the same way after reading this book.