Exploring the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on people’s relationships with gardens

Gordon-Rawlings, Thea and Russo, Alessio ORCID: 0000-0002-0073-7243 (2023) Exploring the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on people’s relationships with gardens. Emotion, Space and Society, 46. Art 100936. doi:10.1016/j.emospa.2022.100936

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Abstract

Gardens are places where science and art combine to create environments that often offer restorative and therapeutic experience to those who encounter them. During the Covid-19 pandemic, in the UK and elsewhere there has been a surge of interest in gardening. Public appreciation of gardens and other green spaces has grown and inequality of access to gardens and outdoor spaces has been extensively documented. Gardens are prevalent and of cultural significance in the UK, where their salutary properties have been documented for centuries. Yet people's relationships with gardens during the pandemic have been relatively underexplored in academia and were already under-researched prior to the pandemic's inception. This qualitative study investigates the relationships between people and gardens during the Covid-19 pandemic. Specifically, through thematic analysis based on in-depth interviews with 12 participants, it explores the effects that the pandemic had on people's relationships with gardens during an approximately 9-month period after the first national lockdown began in the UK. It places emphasis on health and wellbeing and garden design, using the concepts of agency and affordances as lenses through which to explore people's relationships with gardens. The results of this paper support others which have found people to be more supportive of nature-friendly garden design and to feel more connected with nature since the pandemic began.

Item Type:	Article
Article Type:	Article
Subjects:	S Agriculture > SB Plant culture > SB469 Landscape gardening. Landscape architecture
Divisions:	Schools and Research Institutes > School of Creative Arts
Research Priority Areas:	Place, Environment and Community
Depositing User:	Alessio Russo
Date Deposited:	24 Jan 2023 14:01
Last Modified:	18 Dec 2023 10:30
URI:	https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/12286

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