Garden inventories: Reflections on land, place and belonging By MariamPirbhai, Hamilton: Wolsak & Wynn. 2023. 172 pages. $20.00 (paperback). ISBN: 9781989496770

In the first chapter of Braiding sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013, p. 7) writes: “The work of living is creating a map for yourself.” She describes how in every era, and for each individual, the map will be different as it is informed by the stories we understand about ourselves. Kimmerer (2013, p. 9) further explains how in our current era “the land shows the bruises of an abusive relationship” and that healing these wounds cannot proceed without “restoration/re-story-ation.” To heal our relationships with the land, we will need to learn how to hear its stories. Garden inventories is a delightful account of Mariam Pirbhai's attempt to hear and read the stories of a new land and chart her life map. An immigrant to Canada from Pakistan via England, the United Arab Emirates, and the Philippines, Pirbhai explores what it means to become rooted or naturalized in a place. She explains that rootedness is a gradual process that grows in spaces we curate and create for ourselves and ideally it's shaped through interrelations with other human and more-than-human communities. Also, as émigré-settler, Pirbhai recognizes that her vision of her adopted land is “contrapuntal,” refracted through the multiple distinct landscapes where she has lived and developed a sense of belonging, as well as marked by the “historical ripples and echoes of colonization” (p. 5). Through investigating the gardens, lawns, summer homes, nurseries, and conservation areas of her past and present life in southern Ontario, Pirbhai leads the reader along transecting and lush paths to explore the layers of stories and meanings associated with particular terrains, plants, and recreational activities. Across seven chapters, she examines the form and contents of her own, her families’ and her neighbours’ home and cottage landscapes—and how they are representations of particular values and ideas that reinforce or diminish connections to the natural spaces beyond them and their indigenous inhabitants. The book blends history, memoir, and horticulture to create a playful meditation on cultural knowledge as depicted through revered vegetation and landscapes. As a gardener, I was fascinated by the sections that delve into the historical evolution of where plants are cultivated and the common names that are attached to them, by not only European settlers but also by Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island. Pirbhai applies her critical postcolonial sensibilities to these genealogical inquests into the names of flowers, shrubs, and trees to weave together clues about the merging of cultures and places, near and far, and to highlight how “deeply intwined are the worlds of racial and botanical nomenclature” (p. 117). Not a fan of the cultivated rose, I was still captivated by the historical journey of this coveted flowering bush from still unknown origins across the Persian plateau, the Indian subcontinent, and Moorish Spain to northern Europe and eventually the Americas. Pirbhai explains that while in some cases such horticultural trade supported mutually enriching exchanges and the friendly merging of cultures, in other instances these botanical trades were acts of conquest and transformed into markers of superiority. Perhaps the most striking feature of this small book is the elegant way in which Pirbhai integrates theorizing about decolonization, postcoloniality, and Indigenization into her personal discoveries of the provenance of various plants. For example, inspired by the flora they encounter on their daily walks along a nearby creek and woodlot, Pirbhai and her husband decide to replace many of the current plants in their yard with native species. Her observations of the plants in each space transform into clues in an investigation of the differences between naturalized, native, and invasive plants. A comparison of the aggressively suckering European buckthorn in their Waterloo (Ontario) yard with the tamarind tree, cherished from her childhood in Pakistan, reveals some important distinctions about settler status. While the couple find the buckthorn in the woodlot they traverse and hence assume the species to be native to the area, they later discover that it's an encroaching rapacious shrubby tree that crowds out other species, and therefore invasive. In contrast, Pirbhai conjectures that the tamarind tree, synonymous with the Indian subcontinent, is a naturalized species with African lineage. It's a nitrogen-fixing tree with leaves and bark that have medicinal properties, and it is coveted for its sticky sweet and sour fruit. Though common across India and Pakistan, the tamarind tree is a “good-natured transplant” able to “live in harmony with its native counterparts” (p. 115). Pirbhai concludes that non-native does not necessarily translate into invasive. Pirbhai's garden musings are lyrical, insightful, and inspiring. Written in a style accessible to most, I’ll recommend this book to my gardening friends. The book as whole, or chapters of it, could also be considered for inclusion on reading lists of courses in environmental studies, environmental humanities, human geography, and global studies. Pirbhai demonstrates how to hear the stories of the land, heal some of the bruises inflicted upon it, and embody reciprocity and respect as a new settler to it. She presents an expansive understanding of garden landscapes that gives the reader pause to carefully consider the land they call home and how they engage with it and its Indigenous inhabitants.

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